Tag: Heathenism

Eight Virtues Of The Craft

Eight Virtues Of The Craft

Author:   RuneWolf   

One of the sovereign touchstones of Wicca, one which is rarely disputed or quibbled over – whatever other differences may exist between camps – is the Charge of the Goddess.  Along with the Rede and the Law of Threefold Return, it is as close as Wicca comes to a universal sacred text.

We are not a “revealed” religion, in that we do not adhere to a sacred text or texts said to have been dictated to the faithful by the reigning Deity of the religion.  However, we do recognize the phenomenon of Drawing Down, or invoking Deity into a willing and receptive individual, that Deity might more intimately manifest and participate in our rites, and speak through the chosen vessel, if Deity is so moved.  If we believe in this, then it follows – in my mind at least – that Deity may choose, at times, to communicate certain Truths spontaneously through members of the faith (or simply through the average Joe, as I believe occurred in the case of Bill Wilson and the basic texts of Alcoholics Anonymous).  So I, for one, believe that the Charge of the Goddess is in fact the word of the Goddess, transmitted through the willing and capable instrument of Ms. Valiente, and it deserves careful consideration by those dedicated to this path.

As I do every so often, I am currently overhauling and “buffing up” my routine of prayer and meditation.  The practice of a “lovingkindness” meditation has once again been brought to my attention, and I have re-instituted that as part of my meditative practice.  But this time around, something rather marvelous has happened.  Now, it might seem a bit of a “Duh!” to some of you, but to me it was one of those things that was hiding in plain sight for a long time, and only today was it made clear to me.

In brief, the lovingkindness meditation is – as far as I know – of Buddhist origins, and consists of repeating a mantra of virtues and gifts that one wishes bestowed on oneself, others and, ultimately, the entire world.  For instance, one starts by chanting: “May I be joyful, gentle, calm and loving.”  Once this has taken root, one expands this, to, say, one’s family: “May my family be joyful, gentle, calm and loving.”  When one has worked up to it, one opens the heart and spirit to the totality of our little blue-green marble, chanting: “May all beings in the world be joyful, gentle, calm and loving.”

As with so much of the Buddhist canon – simple, elegant and powerful.

When I incorporate techniques from other paths into my (nominally Wiccan) practice of the Craft, I always try to amend them in some way, to make them more relevant to my experience as a Witch or Warlock.  So as I drove to work today, I cast my mind into the aether, searching for virtues and gifts that I might use in my lovingkindness meditation that were a bit more, well, Crafty.

And a soft, contralto voice whispered in my ear: “And therefore let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you.”

I almost drove into a bridge abutment…

As soon as I got the old Subaru back on the road, I had to try it out, whispering to myself: “May I be beautiful and strong, powerful and compassionate, honorable and humble, mirthful and reverent…”  Wowzers!  I got the chills.  Needless to say, I had found the “Crafty” terms for my lovingkindness meditation that I was seeking. But in considering those virtues and gifts for the remainder of my commute, I realized that I had also opened a door to a broader possibility.

One of the things I have always admired about Asatru is the “Nine Noble Virtues,” a list of values that one may use as touchstones for living an exemplary life.  Many folks I know in the Craft have adopted them, or a version of them (much to the annoyance of certain Asatruar), but I have always thought that we should have “our own,” (although there is certainly nothing wrong with nor lacking in the NNV as they stand).

It struck me this morning, of course, that the blessings wished upon us by the Goddess in Her Charge were a perfect source for the “Virtues of the Craft!”  They may not be a comprehensive list of values that one needs to live, love and thrive in one’s life, but they are obviously points worthy of focus, consideration and cultivation, or the Goddess wouldn’t have mentioned them!

Let’s look briefly at each of these:

Beauty: Not necessarily physical beauty, of course, but the appreciation and expression of balance, wholeness and harmony.  Accepting each moment for what it is, and realizing the inherent beauty in the interplay of light and dark, pleasure and pain, life and death.  In the individual, embracing and expressing the beauty and authenticity of one’s True Self and True Will.

Strength: Not merely physical strength or even “energetic” strength, such as chi or ond, but also strength of Will, belief, conviction and ethics.  The strength to do and say the right thing, even in the face of severe consequences.  The strength to be gentle, loving and calm in the face of tragedy, fear and aggression.

Power: A little out of order, as far as I’m concerned, because to me power is the synthesis and interplay of all the other virtues.  But we’ll leave it where the Goddess put it!

Compassion: True and mature love for oneself and others, including our non-human brothers and sisters and the “inanimate” manifestations of Gaea.  The deep sharing of another’s pain, the desire to relieve it and the willingness to put that desire into action.

Honor: “Say what you mean, mean what you say, do what you say you are going to do.”  We often hear that “A Witch’s word is her bond.”  Upholding that bond is honor.  Being honest with oneself and others is honor.  Living up to our commitments is honor.  Living by the Rede, the Law of Return or whatever ethical system you embrace is honor.  As the Asatruar say, “Reputation is what others say about you.  Honor is what you know to be true about yourself.”

Humility: Being “right sized.”  Humility is very much misunderstood in the West, and has been warped into a kind of neurotic and obligatory self-abasement by the misapplication of Abrahamic philosophy.  Toxic or false humility – “Oh, it’s really nothing.  I have no real talent for art!” – is a slap in the face of the God and Goddess who gave us our gifts!  True humility is recognizing both our strengths and our weaknesses, and working to cultivate the former and transform the latter.  True humility, I have often been told, is looking someone in the eye when they give you a compliment and simply saying, “Thank you.”

Mirth: “Rule 62: Don’t take yourself so seriously.”  Mirth isn’t just about getting a case of “the giggles” in the middle of a ritual, nor about singing bawdy filksongs around a festival fire (although these are certainly aspects of mirth).  Mirth is about finding and joining in the sheer joy of living, of laughing out loud at the way trees dance in the wind or guffawing at oneself when you realize you have just invoked “the Grateful Dead” instead of “the Mighty Dead.”  It’s about realizing that The Joke is on everybody, not just on you, and that it’s a wonderful, blissful, eternal Joke, not a nasty one.

Reverence: Love, awe, respect and veneration for Life, the Gods and ourselves.  Gratitude for all the gifts we have been given, and the heartfelt willingness to pass those gifts on to others.

These then, are my nominees for the “Eight Virtues of the Craft;” the short list, if you will.  There are obviously other virtues and values that are important in living a decent and fulfilling life in the service of the Lord and Lady, but I can’t help but think, once again, that She wouldn’t have pointed these particular virtues out if She didn’t want us to consider them carefully.  I shall be doing that very thing in the days to come.

May you always be beautiful and strong, powerful and compassionate, honorable and humble, mirthful and reverent.

Growing Up Wyrrd

Growing Up Wyrrd

Author: Liofrun

Most of us have at one point or another heard a story from a fellow Pagan about growing up in a Christian family, being disillusioned with the religion they were assigned to and later converting. These stories are one of the more popular personal narratives of NeoPaganism, but we are entering an era when many of the elders of the modern Pagan movement are old or dead and not only have children, but grandchildren who have been raised with their particular flavour of Paganism. I suspect the narrative of NeoPaganism is about to change when these people who grew up Pagan start to tell their stories; however, there is yet another narrative not talked about or told as much as the “I grew up Christian” narrative, and that is the “I just came home” narrative. The latter is mine.

Being a convert can be tough, no doubt about it, and it can be particularly straining on relationships with nonPagan family members, and equally as straining on the convertee, especially when it comes to worldview. Pagans have a distinctly different worldview (a fundamental cognitive orientation that includes one’s views of society, philosophies, ethics, normative postulates, etc.) than that of Christians, who represent the majority narrative on worldview in the world. Many do not know how to deal with it, and many blanket Pagan terms over top of old Christian views they have internalised from being subjected to it for many years.

There are some of us however, who have never internalised the majority narrative, despite being subjected to it. Some time ago, I had the pleasure of reading Robin Artisson’s Reclaiming the Pagan Worldview, which, I think, while it has its flaws (i.e., the rejection of science-I believe this discounts all our ancestors’ work toward Academia) , is an indispensible tome of wisdom for the modern Pagan when it comes to thinking like a Pagan and being Pagan. I believe he is right when he speaks of “some people think that being Pagan is a matter of […] making a blanket rejection of their original beliefs” and not much else. I think many Heathens know it when we see it, and know the importance of seeing the world in a Heathen way, especially the hard polytheists. It is a distinct way of perceptualising the world around you and your experiences and merely placing Pagan terminology over top of internalised perceptualisations can severely stunt your understanding of and experience of Heathenism and Paganism.

Heathenism is not compatible with the Abrahamic worldview, the worldview many of us have been taught since birth, and still more have had it ground into us, forced internalisation from everything from the basics of belief in the supernatural to our modern understanding of secularism and societal philosophies. I agree with Artisson that we need to reclaim that Pagan worldview if we are going to be Pagans. Our ancestors created rich cultures of Pagan philosophy, schooling, democracy and secularism from a distinctly Heathen point of view. Our contemporaries have spent years studying, collaborating and providing us with historical and archaeological references, texts and reconstructions of these rich cultures. Their worldviews have also changed how we see the days of the week, and even how we see time. A Pagan worldview encompasses everything from religious rites to our perception of language and how time passes. To not work toward reclaiming it is to do ourselves, our ancestors and especially our descendents are grievous disservice. This is where my narrative comes in.

I did indeed grow up in a typical “Christian household” but the beliefs were never consistent. No one seemed to be able to decide what, if anything, he or she actually believed. They had more internalised the worldview of their Christian society and feared letting it go, and stepping out of the cage. On the other hand, I grew up spending time at my best friend’s house, whose mother was an Indigenous Wiccan. From my earliest memories I saw nature as sacred and in my dimmest, furthest reaches of childhood memory; I was an animist.

When my friend’s stepmother told me about Paganism, at the age of eight, I felt I had “come home”. Of all the attempts to scar me with Christian worldview, not a single one had succeeded to embed itself in my mind. My friend’s stepmother’s own syncretic views of religion had a much deeper impact and while I didn’t end up Wiccan (I often saw Christian baggage being dragged in. Christians in Pagans’ clothing, as it were, and I rejected it in favour of Reconstructionist paths) , today I still see the world in the same manner, and more so.

In my teenage years when I was just discovering who I was, I began to fear the constant press of Christianity both in the forefront and in my periphery and began to work hard everyday to affect my Wyrd and prevent me from ever internalising Christianity. While I no longer fear Christianity, at the time, my young mind felt it was a severely pressing issue. I sucked up the lore incessantly and constantly looked for patterns of Wyrd and Orlog in my everyday life. Indeed, discovering Theodism and Sinnsreachd and Celtic Recon even changed my views of what Heathenry was, and that not every Reconstructionist shares the same worldview, philosophies or ethics, despite the majority narrative within Heathenry being Ásatrú.

Discovering the concept of Wyrd opened my eyes to a way of seeing and understanding the world I had only the faintest, labelless, wordless glimmer of before. I discovered it in my grade 11 English class, reading a Michael Alexander translation of Beowulf. Beowulf became one of my most treasured tomes of lore for its attempt at interweaving an archaic Heathen worldview with a Christian one, and I felt what must have been the same conflict as did the Christian teller of the tale who added his own elements to what was otherwise a deeply Heathen epic. Christianity, in my natural and carefully cultivated Heathen worldview, was morbid, self-serving and deeply confused about its own ethics. They were too focused on death and on purposeful suffering, and indeed I saw all the Christians in my life suffering in ways I could not empathise with because I had never internalised the shame and the obsession with death that forced them into their continual fear and gloom. And this is often what I see in contemporary Heathens who espouse a distinctly Christian flavour coming from being a convert, or even the children of converts. I see it less so with the “came home” narrative, those of us who had a way of perceiving our world and only later found names for it.

I would advise studying the lore, the history and especially the philosophies of not just our ancestors but the ancestors and elders of all Heathen paths and I would advise deeply connecting it to our everyday life on a daily basis. Heathenry isn’t a Sunday sacrifice, or merely posting on Ásatrú Lore once a week, it’s a way of life, it is how you see the sun when it rises, how you drive to work on a Monday, how you effect your Wyrd with every choice you make. Heathenry is who a Heathen is. No one ever said it was easy, but it’s certainly necessary.

Footnotes:
Sharples, R. W. “Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics: An Introduction to Hellenistic Philosophy [Paperback].” Amazon.com: Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics: An Introduction to Hellenistic Philosophy (9780415110358) : R.W. Sharples: Books. Web. 29 Feb. 2012. .

Artisson, Robin, “Reclaiming the Pagan Worldview.” Scribd. Web. 29 Feb. 2012. .