Time To Take Stock

We are living through a period of history that humanity has never encountered before. The world has opened up to us in incredible ways so that although we may never visit Lhasa we know what the temples at the top of the world look like, what sounds come from them, how the people who live in and around them dress and eat and work. We have some concept of the preciousness of the rainforests and the creatures who live with it, we know that we too live with the rainforests because we understand that climate is partly regulated by them. The horrors of war are revealed where in the past they could be denied or minimized. The realities of child labour, animal experimentation and other abuses, and all other miserable realities have been brought into our living rooms at the same time as miracles of health, travel, personal opportunity, semi-democratized knowledge, and choice have blossomed.

Everything is possible at the same time as we are being told that the world is on the brink of collapse. The places where Paganism has best flourished – the UK and US - have never experienced such freedom and comfort. We no longer depend on the opinions of popes and princes to tell us our place in the world, we’re not conscripted into industrial war machines, death doesn’t have such a consuming affect on our lives and we can chose whichever version of the afterlife best suits our desires.

Modern Pagans look to the past as a source of inspiration but we ignore the flea ridden, half-starved, freezing gloom of an average European family home pre-electricity. Most other religions look to an existence beyond earthly life for good reason, experiencing earthly life as something to endure, their Deity being somewhere other than where they are. Most Pagans who have a concept of Deity understand that Deity to be immanent, present in ourselves and in all things and I believe this is significant for Pagan practice.

All other religions make sense of the world through an understanding of Deity, and so has Paganism. When Crowley, Gardner and Valiente introduced the concept of a female Deity it was beyond radical and had serious material effects. Why do Pagans claim to care so much about the planet? Initially, because we understood the planet to be a manifestation of the Goddess. We’ve absorbed animist spirituality and as well as immanence it gives us the concept of genius loci. So we have some vague thoughts about what and who and how Deity might be.

Animism, a product of belief in immanence, has important effects on our practice. If everything is alive and in relationship then what responsibilities do we have for each other? Do rocks and birds have responsibilities towards us, and if not, what makes us believe we are so unique that only we have responsibilities towards other beings?

It seems to me that there are two things fundamental to justifying our ways of being in the world: the ways in which we understand power, and the narratives we tell ourselves. If we believe the narrative of original sin, or that suffering makes us more like Jesus, or of the gifts that Kali gives us then this will effect how we feel about each other, the world and ourselves. The manner in which we live these beliefs will be affected by our understanding of the use of power.

From the dawn of human consciousness people have been struggling with all of this and I see no need to reinvent the wheel, we can use the structures created by others to gain greater understanding of who we are. Where they don’t fit us then we surely have the intelligence and imagination to create our own. But create them we must. The Unitarians, who also avoid dogma, embrace and live within an ethical code. Are Pagans dressed up Unitarians? If we’re not we need to run to catch up with the rest of the world if we expect to be respected by it.

For pity's sake, get involved.

Last week the House of Lords rejected an attempt to relax the law on assisted suicide so that people who accompany their loved ones to the Dignitas clinic don’t have to face 14 years in prison. Britain is pretty good at fudging and it may be that this is one of those situations where fudge is uncomfortable but useful. 120 British people have gone to Dignitas so far and not one of the people who went with them has been prosecuted, there’s a tacit understanding between the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts that people who go to the trouble of arranging a Dignitas ending are not likely to be murderers. Lord Faulkner who sponsored the most recent application to the Lords noted that there was a ‘legal no-mans land’ around the subject, which indeed can be dangerous. It means that the police are choosing what they will and won’t prosecute. As it is the situation is being allowed to evolve, the law following public debate rather than public debate being forced to change the law. I foresee a time in the next 5 or so years when an individual is put on trial as a way of testing public opinion. It would be a very blunt, shortsighted move to put the Downes children on trial today when public debate is raging.

A century ago, a policeman would turn up to arrest someone who had attempted suicide. Never mind the circumstances, the law was the law and a person who was actually dying from their attempt would be put in a cell and treated as a criminal. British society, which was fairly universally Christian, eventually found this intolerable and the law was changed so that the suicidal person was viewed as mad rather than bad. But still, suicide was perceived as something that must be prevented at all costs. This remains the case today. I remember babysitting a depressed elderly man who had cut his own throat so extensively that he severed his trachea. He was caught, pounced on, dragged to surgery and spent the rest of his time folded up in a chair. Nurses weren’t there to care for him, we were there to make sure he didn’t attempt to kill himself again.

Chaplains and counselors are very mindful of a clients right to confidentiality, but should the professional believe the client to be at serious risk of suicide we are bound to break that confidentiality. Other times when confidentiality must be broken are when a child is at risk and when a client is planning or admits to terrorism.

I find it absolutely extraordinary that finding ones own life intolerable is judged to be the same as raping a child or blowing up a train full of people. This is solely a religious hangover and it’s worth noting that the 3 most powerful religious leaders led the Lords rejection to a change in the law. Individual religious people may feel that their suffering demonstrates trust in their god but there’s a dangerous madness in the monotheist approach to end of life suffering. Modern hospices were set up by religious people who recognised that palliative care was not, is not, good enough; sadly, religious people don’t contribute anywhere near the sums required to maintain existing hospices, let alone building enough for everyone. When they do, I’ll be more inclined to take their anti-suicide debate seriously.

So the situation we’re left with is delicate. I heard a man tell the story of his dying mother today, in hospital, suffering, exhausted. Her family asked for a meeting with the doctor who said that surgery would extend their mothers life by two weeks. The family said they didn’t want their mother to suffer any more. “You know what you’re saying?” said the doctor, the family nodded and a morphine drip was set up to run rather more quickly than it should have done. Everyone’s heard a similar story. Nothing is said, everyone knows. It seems to me that this is no bad thing when it comes to illegally killing a person in unalterable extremis.

Doctors and nurses hold enormous power over the lives, deaths and suffering of the people in their care and the anti-assisted suicide theory is that they are there to save lives rather than kill people. But they do no harm, which is very different from not killing. It is very harmful to slice someone open or give them drugs that will kill parts of their body, and that’s what we expect surgeons and oncologists to do. When they do kill people as a criminal act they are generally caught, as Beverly Allitt and Harold Shipman were. Shipman is the only British doctor convicted of murdering patients and 23 nurses worldwide have been convicted, so it’s not something that health professionals tend to get up to. Anti-voluntary euthanasia campaigners make a lot of noise about the likelihood of abuse should VE become law, which is a disgraceful insult to the health care professionals and the people who create the safeguards around such a procedure.

It is, of course, probable that abuses of the system will very occasionally occur. Emergency services are allowed to run red lights and exceed the speed limit and very occasionally a pedestrian is killed. Does this mean that the emergency services should wait for a red light to change and tootle along at 30mph? No system is perfect, there will always be an individual who feels above the law but, as with organ transplantation, policy safeguards and transparency will prevent the vast majority of abuse and catch it when it occurs.

Practice already embraces voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide, precedent is being set, assisted suicide is presented to the Lords every couple of years. Those people who are firm in the knowledge that any positive change in the law will open the door to euthanasia on the grounds of economics seem blind to the fact that it already occurs in catastrophic numbers. If you’re poor you’re much more likely to die miserable, alone or in a crap human storage facility. Private elder and disabled care is already a goldmine and abuse is commonplace.

I haven’t spoken with one Pagan who has a theology around keeping themselves or their loved ones alive in pain. But we haven’t begun to realistically discuss the alternatives. Some of us know about advance directives and that’s about as far as we go. A small number of us will have an idea about hoarding up a store of drugs or leaping from Beachy Head, but these thoughts are hesitant, fearful or more bravura than realistic. We really do need an open debate about the Pagan approach to what will certainly become law within the next 20 years. Judy Harrow began the debate in 1997 ‘Coup de Grace: Neo-Pagan Ethics and Assisted Suicide’ an extended version of which can be found in the Pagan Book of Living and Dying

Take a look here for some different views and opinions.

What is the British Pagan approach to suicide, voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide? If Boudicca killed herself to avoid dishonour, is suicide OK? In which case, is butchering children and destroying Colchester OK? We need a coherent, intelligent debate based on 2 things: our theology, and what we as individuals are prepared to live with in order to balance our lives as Pagans living in a non-Pagan world. The vast majority of us are recreational Pagans, we take up the cosmetic bits of it and use it when we want some recognition but really we’re like the rest of the country in which we live: culturally Christian and just trying to get on. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not a conscious decision, it’s a default position. That’s just about OK if it helps us make choices about whether to eat meat or not and nowhere near good enough when we know people who are in psychological or physical agony and we have no tools to help; not safe when practice is moving, along with the law, towards voluntary euthanasia and we find ourselves just mooching along with it.

Discuss.

International Pagan Values Blogging Month!

Over at Crysalis Pax put out the following challenge:

Let us write of the virtues and ethics and morals and values we have found in our Pagan paths, let us share how we carry these precious things forward in our own lives and out into the world.

Join me, in the month of June 2009 in writing about Pagan values.

http://chrysalis1witchesjourney.wordpress.com/

Go over there to see how it's getting on.

More On Boundaries

The subject of boundaries between divination and chaplaincy is complex and so I sought the opinions of some wise and experienced people.

Holli Emore is the Executive Director of Cherry Hill Seminary.

Isaac Bonewits is a Druid, priest, writer, teacher and the Headmaster of the Real Magic School, psychic, ne'er-do-well and trouble-maker.

http://www.neopagan.net/

Seldiy Bate is a Pagan Priestess and a dangerous old lady.

CS: Hello All, I'm writing a piece about the boundaries between psychotherapy, chaplaincy and divinatory work. Personally I avoid divination on wards like the plague, it feels as wrong as it can get. But you may feel differently. Thoughts?


IB: I don't do health readings much and probably wouldn't in a hospital setting.

I've never been asked to do a reading during a prison visit (have only done a few). It would seem somewhat pointless except for strictly spiritual questions, since the futures of people in prison are pretty frozen until they get out.

HE: I don't always see divination as telling the future or advising a decision. Most of the people I read with gain clarity on their lives, see themselves reflected in the cards, and thus receive value.


SB: I would agree with that.

When I do a "real" Tarot reading, it is exactly that. When I do a commercial Tarot reading (in which we would never discuss health issues anyway, on a regulated service), people just want to know "What's going to happen?" I try my best to explain about Free Will and that the Tarot can point out options, give guidance and show possible outcomes - and that decisions and actions people take affects A future (as opposed to THE future), but most times they will still revert to "What's going to happen?"


CS: Seldiy, you describe perfectly what I've experienced, that despite the theoretical understanding of divination a great many people expect to be told what to do. In these interactions I've found it impossible to get the subtleties of divination across.


SB: It can be a wonderful tool but I think it is best used when the person has some kind of insight themselves. The sort of punters I have on the regulated service are mostly people who don't care what tools you use as long as they can be told "What's going to happen" and because they are paying, they think they own you. They would rather ask ME what someone else feels, thinks or intends to do rather than interact with the person and find out.

But the people who come to it from a different angle - and who possibly have some understanding of divinatory systems, because it is their path, or because they are interested etc - tend to work with me. They don't want to read for themselves, quite rightly, but they need the reader as the catalyst to unlock what's already there. Then it's a good process for both people.

I disagree with Isaac about prisoners being "frozen" though (or their future being frozen). I know what you mean, but their spirit isn't frozen, nor is what they are capable of doing frozen, although of course it is very restricted. I've had a bit of experience with the Jail Guitar Doors project and if anything can bring out motivation, spirit, creativity and ambition, that can. Wow! If the brief had been to do a reading for any of those gals, it would have sparkled.


CS: Seldiy, what's a regulated service? Is this the Fraudulent Medium thing?(!!!)


SB: It's just a phone line thing. All premium rate phone lines (chat, psychic readings etc) in UK are regulated by ICSTIS (now known as PhonePayPlus) and they have a whole stack of rules as to what can or cannot be discussed, as well as regulating the financial implications of such a service. (Which is why these hoaxes about your being unknowingly connected to a twenty six million pounds a minute premium line are a load of rubbish!) All the rules are for everybody's protection and on such a line, I am not allowed to make predictions regarding health, pregnancy and of course, death.


IB: I'm reading a novel called "Houston, We Have a Problema." It's what Phae calls "chick-lit" romance, but I'm reading it because the main character has a psychic she goes to regularly. 2/3 through the story, the psychic, Madam Hortensia, explains to the protagonist that the major thing readers do is give people permission to go with their true feelings.

Naturally, it's when the protagonist stops looking for signs (and stops ignoring the ones she doesn't like) that she makes progress.

Very amusing book and perfect to read between customers. :)

So there it is, some more clarity and understanding. Thanks Holli, Isaac and Seldiy for your help and for permission to share your insights.

Magic on Wards

‘Will you do spells for me?” is the first question most patients ask me and the answer is always no, for two reasons.

1. Doing spells for the purpose of exerting power over someone or something else on behalf of someone who’s mentally ill has obvious ethical problems.

2. Simply satisfying the superficial desire to exert power doesn’t engage with the feelings that give rise to the desire. Exploring those feelings, though a long and perhaps difficult process, will be more fruitful than waving wands about.


Another good reason, perhaps the best, is that if magic is about changing consciousness at will, and if mentally ill people have trouble with their consciousness in the first place, then we need to be alert to the potential for making life much worse for already distressed people. Moral principles aside, this is dreadful PR for ourselves as individuals and as representatives of a minority religion.

To leave a distressed person with nothing from a visit can also be harmful and it’s almost always possible to offer small ritualised acts that can satisfy their need for ‘magic’ without turning the volume up on their distress. Many patients feel that they’re at risk somehow, from another patient, from a member of staff, from an unknown source and while paranoia may be a manifestation of their illness it’s also very real for them. What’s lacking in many health care environments is empathy, of attempting to acknowledge and understand someone else’s experience,

The classic definition of pain is "what the patient says it is, and it's as bad as the patient says it is." (Margo McCaffery 1968) and this is not a bad place to begin when considering empathy as a Chaplain. If the patient says that someone is trying to kill him never mind if it’s a delusion or manipulation or psychosis or any other diagnosis, whether the patient is ‘testing’ you or whatever phrase is used to distance ‘us’ from ‘them’. The patient wants you to hear something about them. I’ve found that the more I authentically hear a patient the better relationship we have, and since all the psychotherapeutic research demonstrates that the model a psychotherapist or counsellor or psychiatrist uses is of far less importance than the relationship between them and the person they’re working with, that seems a good place to start. Take the experience of the patient seriously. Do not dismiss it.

This is not to say that you have to run to the police to say that a nurse is slowly poisoning a patient or to believe that the ward turns into a Bruegal vision as soon as you leave. But we do need to understand that this is the experience of the person who is telling us about it, and to consider how this must be for them.

So what can be done to help this person feel safer, to satisfy their need for help from you, without doing anything that will feed their illness?

Simply listening and taking a person seriously is a spectacularly good first move. Being any patient in a hospital you become your diagnosis. Being a mentally ill patient you are obviously not to be taken seriously: the fact that you believe what you believe is why you’re mentally ill in the first place. As a chaplain, never mind all that. Be With this distressed person. Take them at face value. Start your relationship from a place of mutual respect.

If the patient feels under threat offer a Lorica invocation, a prayer that acts as protection, named after Roman armour. Here’s the Babylonian original

Shamash before me
Behind me Sin
Nergal at my right,
Ninil at my left.


St Patrick’s breastplate was just one of many early Celtic protection prayers. The simple act of listening may be enough to allay the patient’s fears, they may simply feel less mad and therefore less in danger. If being heard isn’t enough suggest that you can perform a protection invocation for them. Hold your hand above their head, then at their feet, then to their left and right, in front of and behind them and say something along the lines of

Let there be peace above you,
Peace below you,
Peace to your right
And peace to your left.
Let there be peace in front of you
And peace behind you.
Peace surrounds you,
So mote it be.

Depending on the patient and how much they genuinely know about Paganism it may be worth describing a pentagram above their head and so on but bear in mind that the pentagram is a widely misunderstood symbol, and it may be offering them something they don’t want or understand.

That’s about the sum of magic I’ve done for patients, and even then only a small minority.

Ritual is another matter and I’ll address that later.