A grain of salt

We didn’t go to fast food restaurants when I was a kid. As a teen witch, I became a bit fixated on acquiring salt packets, but since my family didn’t eat out, there weren’t many opportunities to pick some up. By the time I was earning my own money and could choose to eat out, I was a vegetarian… this was before most major fast food restaurants had a veggie option on their menu.

The books I was reading as a teen Pagan recommended carrying a portable ritual or magic kit with you. Since salt is so useful to Pagans–cleansing, protection, earth symbolism–magic-to-go supply lists would always include salt, often with the note that fast food restaurant packets are convenient and light weight.

In these books, carrying magic supplies with you was treated like carrying CPR supplies in your purse, or a fire extinguisher in your car, or a Naloxone kit if you are likely to encounter people who overdose. It was a responsible thing to do.

When I was a baby Pagan, some part of me imagined that one day I would encounter some sort of spiritual or supernatural crisis that would require emergency magical intervention. I didn’t really believe it: it was a fantasy; an excuse to imagine myself as the hero because I was the only person ready for this kind of crisis… the only person equipped with salt and the secret of how to use it. A lot of new magic users have this type of fantasy, I think. Certainly, I’ve run across a lot of hints of it in the Pagan community.

I had been listening to a podcast about the QAnon cult, and when a handful of salt packets arrived in my dinner delivery, it made me think of how, when I was fifteen, sixteen, I would have found some of the QAnon stuff, especially the “save the children” part, appealing: the idea that marching with a sign and knowing the right incantations to chant would magically change the world. It would be a chance to be a hero, after all, at no personal risk and with no difficult changes or sacrifices needed. And if it wasn’t distracting from real problems, if it wasn’t causing real life harm, if it wasn’t consuming resources needed for real crises, it would be no worse than carrying a packet of salt in case an emergency space cleansing was suddenly needed. It doesn’t surprise me that some people take QAnon to the next level: a sort of live action role playing game made real for them. I’ve seen this in our community too, once in a while.

Luckily, most of us realize eventually that if there’s a crisis, magic is not what is going to be needed on the fly–we will need first aid knowledge, bystander intervention or conflict de-escalation skills, and the ability to stay calm in a crisis. A CPR mask, protective medical gloves, and a cell phone are all more important than a packet of salt in dealing with real life problems.

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A grain of salt was originally published on We're Made of Mud and Magic

What should a Pagan know?

Photo by Ian Lloyd (lloydi.com). 7. Everything possible about Hatshepsut’s temple… I love the podcast “99% Invisible” (who knew glass was so interesting?) and have frequently thought that I would listen to the host, Roman Mars, read the phone book. A recent episode – “The Smell of Concrete After Rain” – included a bit where…

What should a Pagan know? was originally published on We're Made of Mud and Magic

Irony-free Circle

Scheinwerfermann / CC BY-SA “In Defense of Seriousness”: I think it’s that religious experience for me is ABOUT connecting with the serious and solemn. it’s about the both literal and figurative gravity of the world on which we live; it’s about grappling with things that are so much bigger (and so much smaller) then I…

Irony-free Circle was originally published on We're Made of Mud and Magic

Paganism in the time of coronavirus – part 4: Virtual rituals, continued

A socially distanced Beltane was necessary this year. Litha remains a question mark, particularly for my group full of people with health issues. I was in charge of our Beltane, so I tried to take the lessons learned by Jamie Robyn when she ran our virtual Ostara (her post about what she learned is here).…

Paganism in the time of coronavirus – part 4: Virtual rituals, continued was originally published on We're Made of Mud and Magic

Paganism in the time of coronavirus – part 3: Virtual rituals (guest post)

Lessons from a Ritual in Virtual Space A guest post by Jamie Robyn Living through a global pandemic means that we are having to become creative in how we connect with one another. For Pagans, this means we are having to adapt our rituals, rituals that usually depend quite heavily on physical presence. As I…

Paganism in the time of coronavirus – part 3: Virtual rituals (guest post) was originally published on We're Made of Mud and Magic

Paganism in the time of coronavirus – part 2

Strathcona Community Centre

My puppy, Poppy, loves social distancing because she’s scared of most everyone and everything. When we’re walking, I know where the closest person is at any given time by the direction she’s pulling. She’s particularly frightened of group sports involving balls, automatic doors, people walking behind her, scooters, skateboards, groups of people standing on the sidewalk, and people who appear to be talking to themselves (including those on cell phones). The emptier streets and the cancellation of team sports at the fields near us are nice for her, though she still gets pretty anxious. I do wish all the kids in the area would stop playing basketball, both because it is her worst fear and because it seems contrary to social distancing rules.

I’m Poppy’s emotional support human, which is funny because I’m a fairly anxious person myself. Still, I take her out for long walks and we endure passing skateboards and steer at least a block around all basketball dribbling. And right now, we give other people a nice buffer, maintaining at least a metre of space.

Being so hyper aware of other people on the street is combining with the amount of coronavirus news that surrounds me every day and with my natural anxiety and is making me fearful. Other bodies are scary right now; even watching people standing close together on TV is making me anxious. My own body is scary too; though symptom-free, I could be a carrier, and when I see elderly neighbours or babies in strollers out, I am particularly aware of what I could have on me.

I wonder how long this feeling will linger after the crisis is over. The longer we’re all in lock-down, the longer I anticipate fighting with the feeling that other people’s physical presence is a threat and that I am potentially contaminated. Even once we’re free to gather again, I fear that the idea that bodies – mine and other people’s – are inherently dangerous will be deeply ingrained.

I think one of the things Pagan ritual is good for is bringing our subconscious up to our conscious and using it as fuel. When this is over – be it Beltane, Litha, or later – and we can celebrate in person together again, it will also be time to examine the fears of this time and let go of these beliefs that will no longer serve us. We will be able to hold hands again one day, and hopefully sacred space will make it feel safe again when that time comes.

Links: Paganism in the time of coronavirus – part 1 and Paganism in the time of coronavirus – part 3: Virtual rituals.

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Paganism in the time of coronavirus – part 2 was originally published on We're Made of Mud and Magic

Paganism in the time of coronavirus – part 1

Image from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; image is in the public domain. March 18: In the days since posting this, it has become clear that we must practice the most strict social distancing possible, which means that we must cancel all in-person rituals and events unless they are only with those we already live with.…

Paganism in the time of coronavirus – part 1 was originally published on We're Made of Mud and Magic

The contraction of a ritual

I tend to write rituals slowly. I think about it a lot first, contemplating themes and possible activities. There’s a lot of research too, often with a lot of false starts… I still have a lot of notes about lichen from an Imbolc ritual that ended up going in a completely different direction. When the…

The contraction of a ritual was originally published on We're Made of Mud and Magic

Too tired for the gods

A fierce yawn from the last puppy still awake. One of the challenges of a religion without a central authority and professional clergy is that we are all responsible for our own spiritual health. Even when times are good or even just a regular level of stressful, that’s a lot of responsibility to shoulder, but…

Too tired for the gods was originally published on We're Made of Mud and Magic

Circling nothing

“How would you describe something [something] that isn’t there [nothing]? … the way they [the Indians] decided to represent the nothing was they took a little piece of nothing and they drew a circle around it, which turns the nothing into a something.” ¹

And thus zero was invented.

The way we represent the sacred is we take a little piece of the world and draw a circle around it, which turns the ordinary of our living room or local park into sacred space.

Nothing is always present – the void of our death looms – whether there is a zero or not. And the sacred is always present, whether there is a circle or not. These loops help us conceptualize and ground the abstract, but they are not the concepts they represent.

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Circling nothing was originally published on We're Made of Mud and Magic