Pardon the Absence

I see that I have only published one post anything this month. There are two reasons for this: first, I have mostly been reading politics lately (radical left politics to be exact) and don't want this to become an exclusively political blog; and second, I have been extraordinarily busy. I have a post in mind that I will write in the next day or so. Next week my schedule should open up and I will have more time to devote to this blog.

Dinner and a Show

Apologies in advance for any offense I cause here. Let me state at the outset that I have no conscious bias against or even dislike of non-heterosexuals. I just had a friend out himself to me and nothing has changed between us. My concern is purely about the consistency of Wiccan cosmology and theology. I haven't written about this topic anywhere before and realize that I might come off as callous or worse.

The other night I went to dinner with some friends. One person at a table not far from us dropped a plate, and someone at another table began making comments, getting louder with "kids these days are worthless." A woman at the same table where the plate was dropped took umbrage, and an argument ensued. At one point I thought it might get violent. The guy who started it went into a strange tirade featuring the usual social conservative talking points about how "no one teaches kids morals these days," etc. He and his companions eventually left in a huff.

Anyway, that was the "show," since it was briefly entertaining before it got ugly.

Afterwards it took us a little while to figure out what had really happened, since dropping a plate hardly seems to be evidence of the moral decay of society. At first we thought it was a woman defending her children. We saw that she was with another woman, who had a "butch" haircut and, well... so we decided it was a same-sex couple and their kids. Eventually we realized that it was an "LGBT club" or something.

Anyway, we finally figured out that the guy who started the whole mess was a homophobe (he had a seat facing the group and had figured things out before us), and that his real beef was seeing a bunch of gay people congregating. One of my friends who had not been facing this guy had thought he was a woman with a raspy voice, and that made me ponder the idea that homophobes are often repressed homosexuals, a claim backed up by one study from 1996. That's obviously not enough evidence by itself, but it certainly explains this case. Of course who knows if it's true, but the homophobia we're sure about.

We wondered at the time why the woman didn't pick up on the homophobia, but later we realized she did. She must have dealt with this kind of thing before, which explains her immediate and strong reaction as well.

Although homophobia is certainly rampant in conservative Christianity, I find it interesting that Gardner's Wicca also considered homosexuality a deviant form of behavior at first, in keeping with the times in which it developed. And it seems to make sense as well, since Wiccan cosmology and myth deals in polarities, in fact with the coupling of a male and a female deity. But things have changed, and now most or all Wiccans seem to accept that same-sex couples can instantiate the cosmic polarity of the God and Goddess just as well as straight couples.

Given the God-Goddess polarity, this is a little puzzling to me if we assume that there weren't political motivations to this change of heart. I mean, I wonder how Wiccans would handle this separation of the physical (male-female) from the spiritual and theological (polarities) were it not for the progressive movement pushing them to do so. Suppose the movement for greater tolerance of LGBT people had never taken off. Would Wicca have become a gay-friendly religion? I just have to doubt that. Am I wrong?

The Dangers of Yoga?

I've done various forms of sport and exercise over the years, from martial arts to weightlifting to tennis. Just recently I was thinking about taking up yoga. Then I saw a recent article from the New York Times about "How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body." Here is a scary quote:

While balanced on her head, her neck bent far backward, the woman “suddenly felt a severe throbbing headache.” She had difficulty getting up, and when helped into a standing position, was unable to walk without assistance. The woman was rushed to the hospital. She had no sensation on the right side of her body; her left arm and leg responded poorly to her commands. Her eyes kept glancing involuntarily to the left. And the left side of her face showed a contracted pupil, a drooping upper eyelid and a rising lower lid — a cluster of symptoms known as Horner’s syndrome. Nagler reported that the woman also had a tendency to fall to the left.

Her doctors found that the woman’s left vertebral artery, which runs between the first two cervical vertebrae, had narrowed considerably and that the arteries feeding her cerebellum had undergone severe displacement. Given the lack of advanced imaging technologies at the time, an exploratory operation was conducted to get a clearer sense of her injuries. The surgeons who opened her skull found that the left hemisphere of her cerebellum suffered a major failure of blood supply that resulted in much dead tissue and that the site was seeped in secondary hemorrhages. 

The patient began an intensive program of rehabilitation. Two years later, she was able to walk, Nagler reported, “with [a] broad-based gait.” But her left arm continued to wander and her left eye continued to show Horner’s syndrome. Nagler concluded that such injuries appeared to be rare but served as a warning about the hazards of “forceful hyperextension of the neck.” He urged caution in recommending such postures, particularly to individuals of middle age.

I showed this to a friend who did yoga for a while, and she agreed with the substance of the article, that yoga can easily become a dangerous activity if practiced improperly. In fact, she felt that many yoga poses should not be done at all, ever, by anyone. She still does certain yoga poses, but does not strain or hold them for long periods, and she avoids movements that cause discomfort or pain.

I would rather learn yoga from a class than a video, but this is definitely a concern. I realize this kind of catastrophic injury is rare, but I am also concerned about the advisability of doing movements or positions that stretch the ligaments, which, unlike muscles and tendons, do not "bounce back." Stretched ligaments means loosened joints, which is a recipe for injury.

The likelihood is that I will still try out yoga for while, but I will have to practice smart and listen to my body, as they say. I have had enough injuries over the years as it is.

My Current Religious Practice

I am quite new to Paganism, but I find Wicca the best fit for me at the moment. I like that it is a modern religion and that most Wiccans nowadays realize that. It thus beats Heathanism and reconstructionist pagan religions for my religious affections. I briefly flirted with Asatru, but it didn't work for me, for reasons I may go into later.

Wicca is a mix of 19th century Romanticism, suspect anthropology (Margaret Murray), and Ceremonial Magic, and yet I really like it. Its ethos of individualism and self-discovery appeal to my personality. Its well-established ritual base and Wheel of the Year appeal to my need for order and for its attention to the Earth. I feel comfortable with its duotheism.

Although I don't think about the deeper philosophical foundations of it the way I did as a philosopher and Christian, I am inclined toward panentheism.

Finally, I am agnostic on the magic, pathworking, and other less scientifically verifiable aspects, though I have had a handful of experiences (prior to coming to Neopaganism) that could be described as shamanic.

A relative of mine in my house has a statue to Guanyin. That statue has been my personal Goddess. I don't have an appropriate statue to represent the God, but I have been burning Chinese incense sticks to the God and Goddess in front of that altar each morning with a brief prayer of sorts -- Wiccan-flavored, you might say, not Buddhist or Christian.

I haven't gotten into the ceremonial or ritual aspects very much yet, or even the Wheel of the Year. I am trying first and foremost to incorporate more compassion into my life toward my friends, family, living beings, and the Earth. For me, re-sacralizing my relationship with the Earth and the cosmos is the best thing about Earth-centered religions like Wicca, so my practice has centered on that, but I will move on to other things as time goes on.

A Brief Introduction

Just a year ago I made fun of Neopagans. I thought that to adopt the religious epistemology of "let's just see what works," of praying to made-up or culturally extinct deities, was ridiculous. If there was any way of discovering religious truth, it was through revelation, and Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, etc., had all failed.

Times have changed -- at least for me. Now I find myself reading book after book on modern pagan movements, especially Wicca, and taking their ideas seriously. What led to this change of heart, I'm sure I can't say.

Nevertheless, whatever my religious convictions now, I still feel uncomfortable with the views many Neopagans have about government, certain religions (especially Christianity), and other topics. I have also been disappointed by the intellectual shallowness of the reading material on Neopaganism.

So I am a Very Bad Pagan. I like certain things about modern Paganism, but I wonder if my personality is a good fit. This blog is an online, anonymous journal of the exploration I am making into this new world.