Pagans and Paganism

There's kind of an unspoken worry around meeting new pagan groups in your area that comes as a byproduct of us being grouped under a larger pagan umbrella that covers a diverse range of belief systems.  Even within those belief systems you can find a diverse variety of individual beliefs and practices, which ideally keeps us free from (systemic) dogma and allows for a more tolerant and compassionate group of people.

Ideally. 

Unfortunately, the unique situation facing pagans is the blend of 1.) having to defend your practice (whether it has roots in religion or otherwise) as being legitimate in the public sphere while also 2.) avoiding discrimination (or worse) for having those beliefs in the first place. It creates a space wherein some people may succumb to the urge to posit their own tradition/practice as more valid than others with the pagan sphere itself, leading to infighting. This can best be seen in the reviews for almost any popular pagan book on Goodreads. 

What makes this worse is that a lot of people beginning a pagan practice have likely already had to have conversations with loved ones about their new belief system. For many, this experience sets the stage on how they perceive their practice being treated by others, and can understandably make some people defensive and on edge. There's a sense that they have something to prove, or that people will automatically make assumptions about their status as a newcomer to the faith. Worse, there are some pagans who really love a power dynamic and are quick to push down or diminish newcomers in some way and it's honestly really awful. 

I've been practicing for 20 years -- well, almost 20: August marks the 20th anniversary of my first dedication ritual that I, as a very serious 13 year old, painstakingly researched and arranged, fretting over altar arrangement and candle color, worrying that my incense wouldn't please my gods or that I'd be rejected in some way. Time tends to help with the tense worry that you're doing something wrong, and it's in the best interest of everyone for older/experienced pagans to remember what it was like to be new to the craft. Even for ceremonial magicians who have stringent initiation structures, it's unacceptable to treat people who are new to the craft like they're unwanted or that their ideas and thoughts aren't meaningful in some way. 

I get it. I really, really do. I know how frustrating it can be to have a new-to-the-craft person declare themselves "really, really good with fire" and screw up your fire pit at a gathering (or worse). I know it's stressful to have to wrangle people who have rolled up to your long-standing circle to declare themselves the high priest/ess of the moon who is deserving of your collective adoration. I understand -- I really do. But these are people who are looking for something, people who are working through the birthing pains of their practice and are trying to establish footing. For many, they expect that coming to the pagan side of the fence will somehow provide them everything they feel their life has been lacking: esteem, prestige, power, community, instant life-long friends, etc. There's going to be some difficulty in coming to terms with the fact that the problems that exist outside the circle are likely going to be present inside, too. Personal growth is hard, and for those who don't have a comprehensive understanding of the tradition/practice they're joining, there may be assumptions that personal growth is for chumps and that this new thing is going to fix EVERYTHING. 

I know the urge to ignore this kind of person is hard. Honestly, I've done it. I've rolled my eyes and walked away, not wanting to expend the energy to deal with Valstath, Dragon Warlock of the Third Gate, who came to a midsummer gathering in a heavy wool cloak and was sweating his eyeliner off. I know how difficult it can be to expend the energy welcoming someone who seems to be there to present themselves to everyone as a Significant Being within the community when everyone else just wants to hang out and enjoy the company of fellow pagans. 

What I'm asking is this: instead of pushing them away, understand that we were all new once. Even if you were born into a pagan family, you've been new to something and experienced that sense of insecurity (maybe even fear) when walking into a group of experienced practitioners. I'm not saying we were all StarfireMoondust, High Priestess and Sage of the Mer-Unicorn Realm, but we were new (and hey, maybe StarfireMoondust has something to contribute! You won't know until you listen). Try welcoming them in, give them a place to sit, and show them that this is a safe place. Maybe they'll find that your practice doesn't suit them or their needs, but rejecting them out of hand isn't helping them or anyone else. 

Of course, always be mindful of your safety and the comfort of your group. If someone is harmful or unsafe to your circle and makes demands of celebrants, you are under no obligation to host them. There's a vast difference between someone who is genuinely dangerous (pagan or otherwise) to those around them and someone who expresses their tradition in an unconventional way.

Brewing in the Kitchen

Taking a break from all the deep-digging lately, I made a muscle balm to sooth the knot in my hamstring that's been plaguing me for weeks. My methods are not terribly sophisticated since I used a mason jar held in a pot of near-boiling water in place of a double boiler, so in this case you'll mostly just need to worry about the ingredients. Expect nicer words later, but here we are:

You'll need:

A large jar or double boiler you don't intend on using for food again (wax is very difficult to clean out entirely)
A medium/large pot of water for boiling (if you're not using a double boiler)
2oz (1/4c) coconut oil

1oz (2 tbsp) comfrey oil
1oz (2 tbsp) shea butter
1/2 oz beeswax (chopped)
25 drops cayenne extract
15 drops ginger oil
10-15 drops of the following oils:

• Black pepper
• Peppermint
• Rosemary
• Clove bud
• White camphor
• Sage
• Dragon's Blood 

Solid beeswax takes ages to  melt.

If you have beeswax in the form presented here, do yourself a kindness and go to a thrift store or very cheap place that sells a discount cheese grater and grate the wax. Otherwise you'll end up waiting ages for it to melt -- and trust me, you really don't want to use your home cheese grater for the wax unless you never intend to grate cheese with it again. While you're at the store, also pick up plastic spoon (long and thin if you're using the jar method) -- I didn't plan ahead and thus just used a stick I found that I'd stripped the bark off of, but it's entirely up to you and your level of preparedness. The stick was fine.

Put the pot of water on to medium-high. While it's heating, put the coconut oil, comfrey oil, and beeswax into your jar, and the jar into the pot of water. IMPORTANT: The water should be at least 2-3inches lower than the top of the jar.

Once the oils and wax have melted, add the shea butter. Stir well. Carefully remove from the pot and transfer to a potholder (waterproof is my recommendation here, because wax and oil are less than fun to get out of a cloth potholder if things turn messy).

Allow your mixture to cool for a few minutes. During this time you may wish to take a picture of the sun shining through your herb window and nearly blinding yourself in the process (in my defense, a storm was rolling in and the lighting was magical)

Now you begin adding your essential oils and extracts. The exact amount of some of these is estimated -- some of my reducer caps were a little more enthusiastic than others (particularly the ginger) and I ended up with more than I'd planned. To note, the dragon's blood and sage aren't in here for muscle pain, but because 1.) they're generally good, all-purpose things I use in healing/cleansing/"make things better" magical things and 2.) the smell is particularly soothing to me.

While your mixture is still hot and translucent, pour it into your jars. This blend makes about two 50mL jars (At least, I think that's the volume of the jars I had in my supply box for the past five years or so). If you don't have idle hands or pets that are prone to investigating things on counters, leave your jars to cool with the lids off. If you're on a time-sensitive schedule, you can speed things up and let the balm set in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes -- but remember to keep the lids off. Condensation isn't going to ruin your balm but it can look a little rough.

And you're done! The jars should be kept out of direct sunlight (which is why I used darker jars and not because it's just what I had lying around *coughcough*) and used ideally within a couple of months.

Note the very fancy de-barked stick in the background that I used to stir things along 

On Shame

I woke up in the early hours this morning, too early to start my day but just far enough into my sleep cycle that I had a rough time getting back to sleep. And, because the mind works in strange ways, an old memory from fifth grade bubbled up from the depths and filled me with shame. Which, as I lay there in the cool darkness, seemed strange to me because it wasn't shameful at the time. Let me explain. 

When I was a wee 9 year old growing up in Alaska some 20+ years ago, I attended a small elementary school with maybe 150 other students. I was a bit (okay, a LOT) weird by comparison -- in fact, I regularly had lunch in the library because other kids would throw food at me if I ate in the cafeteria. I talked to trees and birds (I wish I could say this was some spiritual kinship thing, but the reality is that I had no friends and was too young/oblivious to feel bad about it, and just talked to the trees, birds, ants, bees, dandelions...) and had no shame or embarrassment about any of it. I didn't hate the other kids or feel left out in any way -- they just didn't like me, so I did other things. 

But that's not the memory that haunted me in the early morning hours. No, we had an assembly in the school gym and I was seated in the front row with other members of my class. At a certain point in the presentation, the teacher presenting gave a rousing speech about school spirit, started playing music and beckoned the front row to come up and dance. I joined them because I loved dancing and didn't think about the fact that the whole stinkin' school was watching, because I just wanted to dance! So we danced and leaped around and when it was all over, we sat back down. 

Seems fairly innocent, no? 

Ah, but she wasn't beckoning to the front row. She was beckoning forth the eight aspiring cheerleaders to come up and perform their rehearsed school spirit dance. I was just the dumb weird girl who jumped up and joined them in uncoordinated flailing that didn't match their dance. The roaring laughter of my peers didn't even register, because I'd interpreted it as general school spirit noise. 

It wasn't until I was taunted in the hallway that I realized what'd happened, and I sort of filed it away in my fearless, undaunted child-brain as a Thing That Happened. It wasn't until years later that the shame really started to sink in, when adolescence starts to kick in and you start caring about the opinions of your peers. 

As an adult lying in her bed at 4am, I cringed and desperately tried to think of something else. The memory refused to budge. 

Somewhere in the depths of my sleepy mind came a quiet thought that questioned why I was so embarrassed about what had happened. Not the usual "that happened two decades ago, let it go already" that I usually thought, but an odd understanding that I was judging my child-self for something she took no shame in, that I was deciding that her expression of joy and desire to move to the music is somehow embarrassing because it wasn't done at the right time in the right place. For all my soul-searching work and lessons in acceptance, I was still looking at this fierce little girl fearlessly living her life and wishing she would be smaller and quieter somehow when I should be lifting her up and admiring her bravery. 

My child-self was not afraid. She lived her truth and talked to the bees, would spend afternoons in fields of giant dandelions singing to herself and watching the ants marching through the grass. She didn't care about the grass stains or the kids laughing as they rode their bikes past her and called her names. She didn't even register them as things she should pay attention to. They weren't interesting, so she honestly didn't care. There was no need to pass judgment one way or another. It simply didn't matter.

Once these thoughts overrode my crippling sense of shame, I gave my inner child-self a hug and thanked her. I have so much more to learn from her and I've been pushing her away for far too long.

I was able to sleep again, and dreamed of dandelions.