Is Covid 19 interrupting your spiritual experience?

I saw a little discussion about how there is a lack of flow due to quarantining. There are no gatherings, people have to do cyber offerings which don't seem to have the same impact, drinking, partying, and the social component of our religious experience as Pagans or as magicians is something from which we are cut off. As a result people feel cut off from the gods and spirits with whom they normally enjoy communion. 

I don't really get this. 

To me, Paganism is definitively social. Pagan means the local religion, so it is the community's relationship with itself and through that relationship between its members its shared relationship with the gods. My primary practice tends to focus on magic and animism and Christianity because I can engage those are part of personal spirituality. Being Pagan means I need a community which I don't have. Not having a community doesn't mean I can't have a relationship with the gods. 

I think there are some things which work a lot better when we have people. I can't host a bacchanal right now. I can still have a relationship with Dionysos that is meaningful and connected and impacts me. I have to adjust it, because part of my Dionysian Charism is sharing drunkeness and revelry with others. I'm looking at some other projects for doing that. The universe is throwing copious drink making recipes and articles at me at record pace. The influence doesn't disappear. 

I think there is also a tendency for people to need the awe inspiring flashiness of some physically obvious touch point. Only seeing the beauty of nature in a strikingly ancient looking tree and not seeing it in the intrepid weed breaking through the concrete of a city sidewalk is too easy of a trap to fall into. Christians and Catholics thinking they have been cut off from their religion because they can't go to church services instead of reaping the joy of a rich and personal devotional prayer practice at home is a similarly easy trap. Pagans lost without the light of a community bonfire forgetting that they can be warmed by living well and making sacrifices to household gods and spirits as much as they can from the conflagration at the great gathering is the same trap. 

It's a trap which is natural for humans. It's a trap we're designed to fall into. We have a great capacity to enjoy and be moved by the epic. It's a wonderful part of who and what we are. 

We also have a great capacity to be moved by the small beauty we find in personal and silent moments. These moments are harder to find, but when we find them their beauty and power can be staggering. 

Losing the physical community of our religious activity is truly a loss we should recognize and experience. It can be unsettling and lead us into feeling cut off. But it's a reminder of the wonder that we can seek, and find, and immerse ourselves within all around us. 

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What Does a Christian Bealtain Look Like?

          Short answer, it doesn’t. It doesn’t look like anything. It’s not a thing.

          I was in a Christian Witches’ Forum on Facebook and a newbie witch was talking about prepping for Bealtain, and I asked what a Christian Witch Bealtain looks like. The answers were basically, whatever you want, it’s all about intent. The forum is mostly people doing Eclectic Wicca from a Christian perspective.

          Christian, particularly Catholic, witchcraft is a solid thing. Historically we have centuries of Catholics practicing witchcraft, we only have about seventy years of NeoPagans practicing witchcraft. So when NeoPagans try to say Christians and Catholics can’t be witches there really isn’t a leg to stand on.

          What is more reasonable is pointing out that Christianity isn’t Paganism and Christian Wicca and things like that don’t smoothly exist as a single thing. Catholics have frequently engaged in double-faith, in which you might go into the woods, or to a clearing, or to your house on a Saturday and engage in Pagan customs and then on Sunday go to Mass. But each tradition is approached separately as their own thing. Another way to do it is to accept that Catholicism is universal, so it universally encompasses all things which exist in the world. So if spirits exist, if gods exist, then they exist in a Catholic world and so there is a way to understand them and experience them from a Catholic perspective. With that being the case Catholic magic must exist. In fact, it does, all over the world and all throughout history.

          So why no Catholic or Christian Bealtain? Well from a Protestant perspective, a core element of most Protestantism is stripping out those elements of religion. Nothing Pagan, nothing superstitious, no magic no idolatry. Catholicism has room for a lot more of that, but it does it in a Catholic context. It isn’t just a matter of doing a Wiccan ceremony with Mary and Jesus as the Goddess and God. There are rich spiritual traditions as part of Catholicism for engaging holy days, and these can include witchcraft or occur next to it. Bealtain isn’t a witchcraft ritual, it’s a Pagan holiday.

          So what does a Catholic Bealtain look like? Well, Walpurgisnacht. A night celebrating a Saint and exploring the otherworldly and supernatural powers. A night where we recognize the same access to the spirit world that Bealtain recognizes, but with customs and practices that engage that experience from a Catholic worldview. Or Mayday, the day after Walpurgisnacht, where we celebrate the advent of spring and the crowning of the Blessed Virgin as Queen, ready to be celebrated over the course of a month dedicated to her. Maybe even May’s Eve, the traditional Wiccan celebration, which is – on some level; more a mystery tradition ceremony than a religious Pagan custom.

          What if Bealtain really speaks to you though? Then do a Pagan Bealtain. Commit to it. Do it right. Even if you’re a Christian or a Catholic, take the double faith approach. Go live it up, explore the access to the dead, talk to the faeries and then ward your land from them, sew fertility into your life. Don’t water down your Bealtain and your Christianity trying to do a fluffy dime store book ritual that is half way between the two things without really being either.  

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Image: By Nyri0 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81651179

Bealtain - Thoughts and a Ritual

A lot of people on Facebook have been posting about their “Beltane” activities, and much of it has to do with debauchery, outdoor sex, dressing up in costumes, may poles, and various European folk customs, many of which are maybe medieval, probably Renaissance, quite possibly not Pagan. This is fine, I guess. This is what Neo-Pagan Beltane involves. That and sacred sex festivals, and adult themed Neo-Pagan gatherings. Being a traditional guy, I like something more traditional, and would assume other traditionalists would too. 

Fortunately this year I'm seeing a lot more people also posting about Walpurgisnacht. That I can get on with a little more. But I'm curious about what people are doing to that end and how they're connecting with traditional European witchery.

I was asked tonight what I'm doing. And what I'm doing is nursing an injured hand, and resting after a long day of coaching my college kids in their local conference championship, which involved another first place victory for one of our women, a third place finish for one of our men, and me becoming a Vice Commissioner and taking on organizing a new division of the conference. So...yeah, long day, witchery and such will have to wait til later, as it's 11pm and I'm just settled and home after leaving at 5:30am.

That said...I probably won't engage in much witchery. I grew up connected with Paganism (was not raised, but began exploring around age 11), not as much Neo-Paganism, but more traditional and reconstructionist varieties. I guess what people would be calling polytheism these days...though I'm not sure I'm ready to join in with that as a movement. So, Bealtain is still one of the holidays I enjoy.

It's kind of like second Samhain. Samhain marks the beginning of one of two seasons, the Winter, and Bealtain the beginning of the second, the Summer. Both involve the extinguishing and rekindling of the hearth, and both involve the division between this world and the next becoming thinner. So it is a holiday that lends itself to witchery, but can also have more communal components, and components that connect to house-holding in a way which is a bit different in my view than witchcraft.

For me I suppose it kind of serves as a maintenance point, which being part of my religious apprehension, isn't necessarily part of my witchcraft or my magic, but underlies it because in reality, religion isn't separate from anything else in life, and if you're a witch you simply are that so it is interwoven into everything, and magicians should also integrate their magic into the rest of their lives. So the division I guess is one of how I approach what I'm doing and what I'm focused on rather than a division in how it affects me and my life.

It isn't so much about magic as it is about relationships and stopping and resetting.

I connect with the parts of the world, I acknowledge the gatekeeper, I connect with my gods, and my ancestors, and the land spirits – both accepting the aid of the beneficial ones and paying off the not so good ones. I make offerings, and I chill with my ancestors and relax and reconnect. As I mentioned in my last post on the dead, this part of the relationship with the dead, while magical, isn't magic, I'm not trying to accomplish something, I'm visiting my relatives, being comforted by their company and letting them be comforted by mine. They just happen to be relatives who don't have bodies at the moment.

In my particular case Bealtain is about a week before my father's birthday, and Samhain is a little over a week before his Greater Feast, so these holidays also mark the times of year for me to connect with his spirit especially.

But yeah, a point to touch base with your spirits, help them feel good and connected to you, and you feel connected to them, and highlighting your relationship with more global and local spirits is work witches and magicians need to do. The easy access to the dead and the land spirits during this time of year makes it natural for this to be a significant witching holiday. It's basically a time of year where nature makes witchcraft more easily accessible even to those who wouldn't normally be witches. No wonder it is a traditional night for spirit contact and meeting the Black Man or the Queen of Elphaim.

Anyway...not particularly witchy, but simple household Paganism...or just simple household living...here is my Bealtain ritual, the words anyway, you can figure out where to maneuver offerings, and when to walk perimeters and such pretty easily from the words. This will be part of my observation this week, along with some work with land spirits and some visits with my ancestors.

Bealtain

I stand upon the land, beneath the sky, before the sea.

By this good fire, may the gods be present and may I know their presence always.

Praise first I give to Manannan who opens the ways between worlds. Though the gates are open this night, your aid and guidance deserve praise.

I offer this fat and blood of the mighty cow that its smoke may rise and please the gods.

I offer this oil to the gods below that they might enjoy it and it may please them.

I offer this drink to my ancestors that they may be pleased with it and be pleased with me. Especially...may I receive their guidance and their aid with an open heart.

I offer this bread to the spirits of the land that they may be friendly to me and keep away all destruction and befoulment from me, my family, and my property.

Let fall away the dark and cold of winter, let the good fire bring the light of summer and all the good therein.