Happy Equinox

My daughter and I went to see Starhawk last night at St James’ Church, Piccadilly. I enjoyed and was grateful for how ordinary Starhawk was: she didn’t offer to Change My Life, she hadn’t seen angels as a child or been given Deep Teachings from otherworldly beings that compelled her to pass Ancient Wisdom ™ on to us. Instead she spoke about permaculture, paying young people to grow vegetables rather than sell drugs and finding people from their own communities to teach instead of parachuting in naïve idealists. She spoke about fungi and microorganisms that thrive on and neutralise pollutants.

My girl was mildly disappointed by the talk. In her own quiet, sceptical way she wanted to be immersed in magic and ritual, to hear a great leader speak about Goddesses and power, learning how to access internal authority and effect change both externally and in ones own essential nature.

Which was what Starhawk spoke about but in such grounded terms and in such an ordinary manner that a young person had to retune away from the hyperbolic ad-speak of so many ‘alternative’ presenters to tune into the regular, everyday voice of someone who has been doing something that works for them and for people who don’t share or care about their philosophy. Disenfranchised young men probably couldn’t give a stuff about theories of interconnectedness and would rather shoot themselves dead than invoke the Goddess but can see the practical value of making a profit from something legal and useful in which they have a personal investment.

My appreciation of Starhawks talk has grown during the night as the experience settled into me. I, too, love a peak experience but the more I see people manufacturing them – the desperate ‘shaman’ disinterested in everyone other than the person with power, the dreadlocked white woman who must howl, the catastrophically anxious Reiki flower essence practitioner – the more precious and illusive such experiences become. I didn’t experience euphoria last night and a small part of me was disappointed; I wanted to break my heart open in the company of my daughter who would simultaneously experience an awakening and homecoming into my own religion. It didn’t happen. 

But we walked through London arm in arm under the almost-full moon, she listened as I explained that Paganism is, if it is anything, about Being Here Now, becoming a grounded, practical person concerned with and part of the natural world. Any damn fool can buy a cheap fake turquoise bracelet and jump around under the title Earth Warrior, but it takes a different mindset to plan and grow a garden, a family, a home, and to be of use to people who don’t want to see divas but do want to eat. Sometimes, perhaps, pretending to see angels is an fledgling part of that mindset.

So this week contains both the autumnal equinox (let's just call it the autumnal equinox rather than impose a medieval boys name onto it for no good reason) and a full harvest moon. I wish you a good yield from this years work, a continued gathering of fruit and root and shelves filled with glowing preserves and stored abundance. I wish for us all an understanding of the vital importance of the mundane as well as a yearning for the transcendent, and a dark green appreciation of the immanence of the ordinary.

Pagan Medical Ethics

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-10899275

The concept of Pagan ethics is getting a good airing; as a community we’re ready to think about our responsibilities as well as our rights. But I do wonder how, or even if, we approach medical issues that other religions struggle with, things like fertility, quality of human life and the artificial manipulation of genes. Individual choice is part of the post-modern mindset which Paganism has most effectively embraced and of course no matter what any religious authorities decide on most individual religious people go their own way, choosing to have or not have assisted conception, abortions, genetic treatments for conditions such as spinal muscular atrophy and so on. Their religious leaders and societies have the debate, understandings are generated but followers generally ignore them. Beyond vegitarianism and in the US, the abortion debate (based in politics much more than religion) we're yet to really get going.

News of Ciaran Finn-Lynch and his life-saving trachea transplant grown from his own stem cells reminds us that medical science is both exciting and moving at a speed that may often be beyond what we can keep up with. New guidelines around the use of genetic tests for children demonstrates that philosophy may not move as fast as science or the free market but is profoundly necessary to protect the individual, family, society and the most vulnerable from the excesses of both.  Freedom of choice for the parent has, in this situation and others, overwhelmed the rights of the child. Post modernism and raw capitalism are ironically close relatives.

So where might Paganisms start with a deasophy of assisted conception? Do we start with ‘An it harm none . . .” or the damage that is being done to the Earth by the unsustainable numbers of humans draining the basic resource of water? We already use medical technologies like surgery, chemotherapy and antibiotics so why not AI and IVF? Where do our responsibilities as a human community intersect with our individual human rights? Might we embrace infertility not only as part of the natural world that is as worthy of respect as other aspects of fertility, as much a demonstration of balance in nature as flood and fire but now also a much needed natural gift to the Earth? Might we forgo or limit reproduction as part of a sustainable relationship with the planet? This might be the most pointed definition of ‘Bioethics.’

Vegans have long experience of coping with the ethics of animal-derived medicines and treatments born from vivisection but what about the ethics of human research? Are Pagans who put themselves forward for medical research honouring animals or dishonouring their own bodies? How does being paid for the risk effect the ethics?

And since we don’t consider our children Pagan how do we make decisions about our children’s health? Is there a uniquely Pagan way or do we just tag along with our friends?

There are often no answers to these kinds of questions but in attempting to answer them we discover what is fundamentally important to us and why, not just viscerally but materially. Speaking about inter-relatedness and earth consciousness is one thing; but how do we relate to the realities of disability, poverty, mental illness?

Obstetric and neonatal care and life expectancy has improved so radically that there are already a greater number of people with learning disabilities than there were a decade ago and this number is expected to rise.

In the UK most people who have learning disabilites live with their families and 40,000 live in institutions. Although a tiny minority of these institutions are excellent (measured by the kinds of relationships you would want for yourself rather than a managerial tick box exercise) most people in institutions are not treated as well as they might be.  Here are some cheery statistics:

•    Four times as many people with learning disabilities die of preventable causes as people in the general population.

•     People with learning disabilities are 58 times more likely to die before the age of 50 than the general population

•     Almost one in three people with learning disabilities say they do not have any contact with friends.  One in twenty have no friends and do not see anyone from their family

•     40 per cent of people say they would like more say in what goes on in their everyday life

•    Nearly one in three people say they did not feel safe using public transport

•     Nearly one in three people with learning disabilities said someone had been rude or offensive to them in the last year. In most cases, the person who bullied them was a stranger

•     Only one in four women have ever had a cervical smear

•    More than one in ten people with learning disabilities say they never feel confident.

People with learning disabilities have a right to life. They can have rich and fulfilled lives and improve the lives of people without learning difficulties simply by being present in them. The reality is that most will die young and live as second-class citizens. Like the elderly and mentally ill they are too often used as a form of employment scheme for people who would not be able to work in an environment where clients can make use of a meaningful complaints process.

How might a Pagan ethic approach this situation? People who detest the meat industry can become vegan and have an economic effect, but how do we respond to a reality that is located between ethics and economics, between total expediency (involuntary euthanasia) and a total social revolution that values fire-fighters, teachers and people with disabilities as much as CEO’s and celebrities? We know it’s wrong to euthanize people with disabilities (Why? Just because Nazi’s did it? Is there a Pagan take on right to life, voluntary and involuntary euthanasia, quality of life?) but we are, in truth, killing them off through direct and indirect neglect and many will live lives filled with casual, catastrophic and everyday abuse.

Some of these issues are addressed directly in Starhawks' Truth or Dare whose understanding of power dynamics have been taken up by academics and practitioners. If Paganisms are more than Reclaiming what are the other Pagan ways of approaching modern medical ethics?

The temptation is to look for ultimate answers where there may only be fragmentary ones if any exist at all.  But engaging with the questions, examining reality as it is rather than as we wish it was; developing new and decidedly Pagan understandings of what, why and how we value the Apparent world (as opposed and in relation to our colossal valuing of the Otherworlds) and the people in it (as opposed and in relation to the concepts of animals, Land and Nature) demonstrates a readiness to be taken seriously as part of that world.

Start here with a feminist, relationship ethic and please feel free to contribute your own favourite
 Pagan medical ethic pages and sources.

Speaking Truth To Power

Paganism doesn’t really discuss power any more. It used to be a basic teaching for people who wanted to learn to change consciousness at will or work with love under will. In the last decade or so that’s all been perceived with a hint of revulsion: we shouldn’t want to exert our will over anything, we should all be striving to be One, whatever that means, and filled with Love and so on and so on until it has become a deafening fascistic blare. Debate is absolutely not welcome, it shatters our fragile self-image, and frankly, many Pagans’ understanding of themselves and of the world is very fragile indeed, coming down to a kind of addiction to pseudo-peak experiences and awful psychobabble.

Starhawk defined three types of power:

"power-over," referring to domination and control; "power-from-within," meaning personal ability and spiritual integrity; and "power-with," pertaining to social power or influence among equals.

If you’re a Pagan and you haven’t read Truth or Dare then you should. If you’re a chaplain and you haven’t read Truth or Dare you need to stop practicing as a chaplain until you do, and have discussed it with an equal or someone more skilled, and have formed a different opinion to the one you hold now. I make no apology for being directive: if you identify as Pagan but haven’t read the basic text for the Pagan understanding of power then you are not, no matter what your coven or grove or teacher or anyone else soothes you with, ready to work in a position of power.

Many Pagans will be outraged at that assertion. It is not popular because it is not soothing. It is directive and questions a persons skill and goodness me, Pagans must never do that! Many Pagans dislike Starhawk because she’s quite overwhelming and it’s not nice to make people uncomfortable. When did witchcraft, asatru, shamanism or druidry ever give a hoot about popularity? Of course we’ve needed to educate non-Pagans that we don’t sacrifice babies or drink blood, and we’ve needed to avoid publicly discussing the complexity of what we do, but we’ve stopping discussing it at all. It used to be that we did neither black nor white magic, but grey. Now we do Green magic, whatever that is, or better still no magic at all. We’ve come to believe our own PR.

Cure and curse is an ancient philosophy going back at least to Thoth and his pharmakon. It’s what surgeons do when they cut into the healthy skin and tissue of a human being to get to the internal, hidden problem. It’s what everyone does when they take antibiotics, and our Ancestors weep when we get sanctimonious about medicines they died from the lack of. Witches don’t politely request that things change, we make it happen. Druids were highly skilled specialists with decades of training under their belt. Shaman are liminal people, unsettling, often suffering, often what we would call very seriously mentally ill. People who do magic are not very concerned about being popular.

The paradox is that people who get things changed for the better are seldom pleasant to be around. Most people were quite content with slavery. Those people who felt slavery was wrong either shut up in order not to rock the boat or got angry and made a great deal of noise about it. Suffragettes set fires and bombs and broke windows. Chartists carried guns and Nelson Mandela was the co-founder and leader of the armed struggle against apartheid. They were all profoundly unpopular, enough to be killed or imprisoned or tortured, and now we all believe slavery to be evil, everyone having a vote and resistance to fascism very fine principals.

A renaissance in the culture of Paganism seems to be gently under way. “Is that all there is?” has changed from a disappointed sigh to an angry demand. Those Pagans who, either by nature or philosophy, haven’t been comfortable with Christianized or Buddha-natured Paganism are getting a hearing once again. Chaplaincy has always been an underground activity, functioning in the liminal, grey places where people are put when they disturb the rest of society. We have knowledge and understanding that can serve that society when it gets sick of itself.