The Orchid Shamans
Phipps Conservatory, Pittsburgh, PA
Showing posts with label magic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label magic. Show all posts
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Keeping the Days: The Orchid Shamans
The Orchid Shamans
Phipps Conservatory, Pittsburgh, PA
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Friday, November 5, 2010
Same Time Tomorrow: A Meadowsweet Donation Drive
| Click above to donate! |
"It's hard to be famous and alive. I just want to play music every day and hear someone say, 'Thanks, that was great, here's some money, same time tomorrow, okay?'"
- Terry Pratchett, from Soul Music
Lovely, beautiful, generous readers.... have you been working out? Seriously, you're looking really good these days, at least ten years younger than you are (you're in your early thirties, right?). Your hair always looks fantastic. And have I mentioned lately how much I enjoy your company? Always so witty and interesting — you must be the joy and envy of all your many friends. Also, I heard that your spouse/offspring/pet did really well in that thing he or she was doing, and I know that you must be so proud — though I bet they have you to thank for all your encouragement and support. You know, speaking of support....
I've been thinking recently, especially after my little crisis back in September, that it's time for a bit of a shake-up around the old blog. I have visions in my head of a truly marvelous semi-magazine layout, with feature articles, more frequent guest posts, an expanded resources page, maybe a poetry and lectio divina column... And, most thrilling of all, a domain name. O so professional.
Of course, I've been blogging here at meadowsweet-myrrh dot blogspot dot com for several years now, fast approaching my three-hundreth post, and the sheer number of pages published here could easily fill a couple sizable books. Meanwhile, the number of you wonderful readers has crept up and up, especially over the last year. Many of you keep coming back because, let's be frank, you are wise and well-read people who recognize good writing when you read it — but more importantly, at least I hope anyway, you can tell when a person has poured her heart and soul into the work she shares, and you are kind and empathetic folks as well as being intelligent and sharp as a tack.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Participating in Enchantment: Reflections on Magic
Susan Greenwood, The Anthropology of Magic
.
New York: Berg Publishers Ltd, 2009.
Review by Alison Shaffer
After the flight to Charlotte, North Carolina, two days earlier, I had learned one thing for certain: I was not a natural flyer. My first time in an airplane in more than fifteen years had left me feeling queazy and disoriented, retreating to the quiet sanctuary of my hotel room for the evening as I attempted to ground myself in a new landscape and a new city hundreds of miles from my home in chilly, hilly western Pennsylvania. High-rise buildings, a depressing lack of trees and green park space, people walking around without jackets in early December: I'd spent the trip feeling out of sorts and cut off from my usual sense of place. Now, I sat anxiously in the claustrophobic cabin of the plane, preparing for the flight back to Pittsburgh and worrying that I was in for another nauseating, jolting ride.
Susan Greenwood's latest book, The Anthropology of Magic, was tucked into my carry-on. The text was academic in flavor as well as subject matter, and clearly it had been written with the new student of anthropology, rather than the lay magical practitioner, in mind. A more accurate title for the book might have been "Competing Theories About Magic, And What It Really Is, In Anthropology," though that would have admittedly been far less catchy, and a bit cramped on the spine. The text introduced a good number of scientists and researchers who had spent their long, distinguished careers studying the practice of magic and shamanic techniques in tribal cultures throughout history and all over the world. Some of the names I recognized from my college days studying comparative religions, but even still I had often felt my head swimming as I worked through Greenwood's arguments. I'd spent the past few days reading her intense (and sometimes convoluted) discussions of the myriad competing theories of consciousness, ritual, reason and myth that have been informing and shaping the field of anthropology for the past several generations. While I knew such a book wasn't your typical how-to Magic 101 that many Pagans might enjoy, I also knew that the text held something immensely valuable for those seeking to deepen their understanding of magical work as a spiritual practice. It would take time, and some rigorous intellectual work on the part of the reader, but it would be worth it. As our plane taxied into place on the runway, I took a deep breath and pulled out the book, flipping through the loose pages of notes I'd taken and thinking once again about the nature of magic.
.New York: Berg Publishers Ltd, 2009.
Review by Alison Shaffer
After the flight to Charlotte, North Carolina, two days earlier, I had learned one thing for certain: I was not a natural flyer. My first time in an airplane in more than fifteen years had left me feeling queazy and disoriented, retreating to the quiet sanctuary of my hotel room for the evening as I attempted to ground myself in a new landscape and a new city hundreds of miles from my home in chilly, hilly western Pennsylvania. High-rise buildings, a depressing lack of trees and green park space, people walking around without jackets in early December: I'd spent the trip feeling out of sorts and cut off from my usual sense of place. Now, I sat anxiously in the claustrophobic cabin of the plane, preparing for the flight back to Pittsburgh and worrying that I was in for another nauseating, jolting ride.
Susan Greenwood's latest book, The Anthropology of Magic
, was tucked into my carry-on. The text was academic in flavor as well as subject matter, and clearly it had been written with the new student of anthropology, rather than the lay magical practitioner, in mind. A more accurate title for the book might have been "Competing Theories About Magic, And What It Really Is, In Anthropology," though that would have admittedly been far less catchy, and a bit cramped on the spine. The text introduced a good number of scientists and researchers who had spent their long, distinguished careers studying the practice of magic and shamanic techniques in tribal cultures throughout history and all over the world. Some of the names I recognized from my college days studying comparative religions, but even still I had often felt my head swimming as I worked through Greenwood's arguments. I'd spent the past few days reading her intense (and sometimes convoluted) discussions of the myriad competing theories of consciousness, ritual, reason and myth that have been informing and shaping the field of anthropology for the past several generations. While I knew such a book wasn't your typical how-to Magic 101 that many Pagans might enjoy, I also knew that the text held something immensely valuable for those seeking to deepen their understanding of magical work as a spiritual practice. It would take time, and some rigorous intellectual work on the part of the reader, but it would be worth it. As our plane taxied into place on the runway, I took a deep breath and pulled out the book, flipping through the loose pages of notes I'd taken and thinking once again about the nature of magic.Saturday, September 4, 2010
Peace and the Celtic Spirit: Excerpts from a Journal (6)
In August 2010, just past the waxing quarter moon, I attended a retreat on Celtic spirituality and peacemaking in Northern Ireland. The hosts of the retreat asked us to respect the safe and sacred space created by the community, and refrain from attributing direct quotes to any of the attendants or speakers. With that in mind, the following are excerpts from the journal I kept.
Day Six — The Wise Man in the Woods
It's about 10 PM, and our day of silence has technically begun. Which means I may actually have half a second to write and complete my thoughts.
We came to a bird lookout-hut, a small wooden hut with horizontal slits all along its walls giving a view of the shoreline of the lake. The weather was rainy and gray — my hair was damp and matted down from the walk there — wind whipping the blue-gray waters of the lake into whitecaps. Absolutely gorgeous.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Ruby Sara :: To Pray in Color
Greetings, friends, from the sweltering streets of the fiercely-wild urban midwest! I am honored to be posting here at Meadowsweet & Myrrh this month — many thanks to Ali for the opportunity!
From where I write this, the land is up to its ears in late summer weather — hot, muggy, days and restless nights. The rise and fall of cicadas and the smell of roasting corn. These days between, when the Beloved has died again for his people (say Hail to that Sweet King of the Raw Feast, Master in the Wheat and the Corn; the Fire in the Whiskey, the Burn in the Blood!) and the orchards settle in for apple season, I anticipate the double-edged lessons of harvest — bread and death, decay and abundance. The days grow ever shorter, but still the Mama overflows — gardens run weedy and rampant with fruit. The tomatoes ripen and swell into a ready red, the rose hips begin to turn, and those who garden anticipate zucchini bread, and zucchini casserole, and zucchini soup, and grilled zucchini, and zucchini conversations, and zucchini jokes... and sacks of zucchini left on doorsteps by anonymous hooligans with green thumbs and dwindling storage space. All hail the mighty zucchini! If we were to create a green saint of determination and fortitude, we might do worse than to nominate this outrageous vegetable/fruit. Zucchini may take over the world yet, haunting our days with its yellows and greens. I love zucchini like I love the summer — the flagrant, saucy ripeness of it, the fiercely mad dancing that goes on and on forever — a whirling, roiling drumbeat of moths and moons, of color and life.
Yes, summer passing slowly into fall is a season of outrageous color. The Mama, giving up her precious ghost, gasps her last in shocking, glorious extravagance — soon the sunset season in red and copper, thrust against a matchless blue sky. Yellow corn, squash and apples. Golden honey, and rain that turns the wind into diamond music. The smell of smoke, even... the colors of harvest not only in those our eyes perceive but our other senses as well. The color of heat, the smell of ripe apples rotting on the open ground, the sound of bees in the field.
From where I write this, the land is up to its ears in late summer weather — hot, muggy, days and restless nights. The rise and fall of cicadas and the smell of roasting corn. These days between, when the Beloved has died again for his people (say Hail to that Sweet King of the Raw Feast, Master in the Wheat and the Corn; the Fire in the Whiskey, the Burn in the Blood!) and the orchards settle in for apple season, I anticipate the double-edged lessons of harvest — bread and death, decay and abundance. The days grow ever shorter, but still the Mama overflows — gardens run weedy and rampant with fruit. The tomatoes ripen and swell into a ready red, the rose hips begin to turn, and those who garden anticipate zucchini bread, and zucchini casserole, and zucchini soup, and grilled zucchini, and zucchini conversations, and zucchini jokes... and sacks of zucchini left on doorsteps by anonymous hooligans with green thumbs and dwindling storage space. All hail the mighty zucchini! If we were to create a green saint of determination and fortitude, we might do worse than to nominate this outrageous vegetable/fruit. Zucchini may take over the world yet, haunting our days with its yellows and greens. I love zucchini like I love the summer — the flagrant, saucy ripeness of it, the fiercely mad dancing that goes on and on forever — a whirling, roiling drumbeat of moths and moons, of color and life.
Yes, summer passing slowly into fall is a season of outrageous color. The Mama, giving up her precious ghost, gasps her last in shocking, glorious extravagance — soon the sunset season in red and copper, thrust against a matchless blue sky. Yellow corn, squash and apples. Golden honey, and rain that turns the wind into diamond music. The smell of smoke, even... the colors of harvest not only in those our eyes perceive but our other senses as well. The color of heat, the smell of ripe apples rotting on the open ground, the sound of bees in the field.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Etymology of My Gods
Update: In light of this morning's news, I would like to dedicate this post to Isaac Bonewits and his family. Though I never knew him personally, I find myself deeply saddened by his passing, but also deeply grateful for the vision and influence he had within our community. His thoughts on liturgy and theology have both challenged and inspired me, even when I haven't always agreed with them. American Druidry wouldn't be the same without the energy and devotion he brought to everything he did. I pray we will one day achieve, with joy and grace, that vibrant Pagan community he envisioned and worked for all his life. May your journey beyond the Ninth Wave bring you peace and beauty, Isaac, and may love and blessings comfort your family and friends in their time of grief.
That word for god — the breath, the gleaming — the shining days like great columns bearing up the sky, buttresses, rafters. Beams that in their falling, hold.
I say the names of my deities, I feel the drop of each sound into silence. They gather on the long, bent grasses in the meadow and the field, *dewos-, the many that glisten in the coming dark. Amulets of sky, jewels of the daylight, coalescing in the movement of my breath, the lingering touch of the wind. They draw themselves, wavering, into the weight and gravity of form.I open the door, and the gods enter the dark interior of my being. The gust, the call, tracing themselves in the dust of the rafters, the shift that shivers down in drifts of gentle gray and grit, mingling particulates stirring in every corner of the sunlight. What is so small and intimate and strange — numen, spirare — the dancing footsteps of spirit in the air, the vital stir of fear, the silent thrill, calling me to courage in the deep spaces of my birth and dying, the liminal between. I am on the threshold, pouring out my breath in quick libations. I am pouring out my soul-song to mingle on the doorsill with the soft noise of their presence.
And She is rising up again, and rising up, she is the exalted queen and lady of all that rises up —
Friday, May 28, 2010
Delving into Divination: A Long Story of Silliness
Temperance (XIV): Dressed in faded red, she perches perfectly balanced and at ease on the twisted limb of the old tree, suspended in air rippling, spiraling, tingling with the great powers that surround her. In her pale arms she cradles the pulsing sphere — wisps of energy, the tiny fey beings, drift and rise like steam, swirling and weaving, twining around each other as they climb until they blossom into full, solid forms. Watery blue, fiery gold, the great-talonned dragon and the frantic phoenix entwining, arching skyward, each with an orb of its own, pure color. The stony gargoyle makes offerings; the little songbird opens its wings wide, about to take flight. Her thoughts turn around them, seeking the power of their presence. She touches the sphere, undisturbed, her long fingers moving lovingly in contemplation — the perfect, pale-white glow of a halo exactly framed by the curve of her small, delicate wings, the light of it whispering to her, her thoughts turning around each other, dark and bright, water and fire, a sensual dance of power, duality, tension and life. The brown curls of her hair float as if caught up in a warm, rising current. She holds the churning forces of the world in her mind, between her hands, and every movement is poised here, utterly, in this moment, like a gulp of delicious air, like a quiet gasp in the center of a storm.
- excerpt from my tarot journal
For one reason or another the practice of divination has been something that, for a long time now, has given me trouble. I just never seemed to "get into" it. Perhaps because of the amount of study and memorization it seemed to require (though for other subjects and practices this has never stopped me). Or perhaps because my day-to-day life is often so exquisitely routine that daily readings hardly seemed relevant. Or maybe both. Though I consider myself a generally intuitive person, cultivating this aspect through my creative writing, divination as a regular practice seemed... unnecessary, one of those things people did to feel "occult" rather than taking the time to analyze their motivations and behaviors in more mundane ways, or maybe to wow their friends at parties. But I don't go to many parties, lovely readers, not many parties at all.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Announcing: Prayer for Peace Giveaway Winners!
Before I announce the three winners of Meadowsweet & Myrrh's first-ever (and hopefully not the last) Prayer for Peace Giveaway, I want to thank absolutely everyone who entered the drawing over the past several weeks. I received emails from readers all over the world, and it warms my heart to see how many folks out there are working for peace in their daily lives and reaching out in unique and amazing ways to help resist violence and indifference. Thank you, all, for reading, sharing, and engaging in the creative art of peace-making!I must admit that, at first, I was tempted to weight the drawing towards those folks who have been active readers of this blog in the past, continuing to share their thoughts and ideas in the comments and helping to make this such a thriving and challenging little online community. But then, I am just as grateful for the newcomers and one-time readers as I am for the "old-timers" and familiar faces. The more we work to spread kindness, compassion and creative pacifism in our daily lives, the more we will continue to encounter the strangers that live on the edges of our awareness. These chance encounters with the Other are as much moments of potential peace-making as the daily grind of engaging family, friends and coworkers in honorable, loving ways. And so, in the end, I decided to let chance roll the dice, and with the help of the completely-truly-random List Randomizer, I selected the names of our three winners out of the internet-ether.
And those winners are: Natrina Lawson, Lori Maddox, and Edie Hansen!
Congratulations Edie, Lori and Natrina! Within the next few days, I'll be sending your way a complimentary set of handmade prayer-beads, along with a copy of the Peace of the Three Realms meditation! I hope you enjoy working with these beads and exploring themes of peace, creativity and love in your daily practice — remember: we can change the world with the stories we tell!
To everyone else, thank you again for entering! In the future, I'm hoping to host more drawings for prayer-beads (potential ideas at the moment include: a monthly blog post/essay contest on themes of peace, pacifism, honor and justice, art or poetry contests, and coordinated group rituals).... so please come back and visit, and keep your eyes peeled in the new year!
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Song of a Daily Druid: Elements of Ritual
For those of you who enjoyed or were intrigued by the Samhain rite and subsequent ritual musings I shared here earlier in November, this month's Song of a Daily Druid (over at Pagan Pages) focuses on The Three Elements of Druidic Ritual and explores some of the theory behind creating powerful rituals and daily practice. Hop on over and check it out!What is the purpose of ritual? In many Pagan circles ritual is seen primarily as a method of magical work or spellcraft, a way of raising and directing energy for a particular goal. This might take the form of blessing candles for healing magic, or invoking the presence of a particular deity to provide guidance or aid for a specific problem. In Druidry, however, though magic has a role to play, sacred ritual holds a far more poetic place in both personal and group spiritual practice. In previous columns, I have talked about the way poetry connects us to one another through memory, imagination and creativity, how it reaches beyond the tensions of duality and opens up in us a sense of metaphor, how it speaks to us of space and potential that can transcend and reconcile, clarify and illuminate. Although it can be used for specific magical purposes, Druidic ritual serves primarily as a way for us to live our poetry in the world of physical reality as well as in the world of words.
Just as the art of poetry requires a certain set of skills — a grasp of language, its rhythms and sounds, a strong sense of concrete sensory details, etc. — the art of ritual has three basic elements or aspects that a practitioner must come to work with and know intimately. These aspects echo the Druidic elements of calas, gwyar and nwyfre, found in everything, everywhere: the stability and solidity of stone, the fluidity and movement of water, and the "breath of life," the energy and life-force of wind (and fire). Learning how to incorporate all three of these elements into Druidic ritual helps to ensure a powerful and meaningful experience, more poignant, authentic and spiritually fruitful than the kind of melodramatic role-playing that Pagan ritual can sometimes risk becoming. But more than this, these three elements serve as symbols, a means of connection and a reminder of the three elements of calas, gwyar and nwyfre that dwell within all things. Likewise, by mindfully incorporating these elements in a way that is beautiful and aesthetically moving, we re-create or invoke the cosmos within the ritual sacred space — as above, so below — and so our actions in that space themselves become cosmic or mythic in meaning. What are these three elements of Druidic ritual? Put simply, they are: matter, sound, and energy.
......To read more, check out Song of a Daily Druid
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Security, Prosperity, Generosity
My dear readers,
Times is hard.
Hopefully you already know Jeff Lilly, at least through his insightful writings over at Druid Journal. Jeff is a fellow member of AODA, a dear friend of mine, and a wonderful human being if ever I knew one. Only a few months ago, 'friends' was all we were, but since mid-March, we have become much more than that to one another.
Life works in mysterious ways. For the past two months, it seems the churning mechanisms of coincidence that spin this Universe of ours have been conspiring to make us happy. Family and social circumstances seemed perfectly in sync, bringing our lives closer together, smoothing the path before us. If I didn't know better, I would have suspected that we were merely madly in love, but it was more than that. Love couldn't explain why his ex-wife's fiancé's parents happen to live only minutes from me, or why his initial choice for a new apartment fell though just when a place became available that was cheaper and in a better location. Love couldn't explain my sudden surge of motivation and energy, or why all my mind-boggling bad luck seemed to be giving way to pleasant surprises and clear sailing... could it?
As sometimes happens, though, the ride has been getting a bit bumpier lately. Still finalizing the paperwork on his divorce and nailing down plans to move the whole family out to Pittsburgh, this morning Jeff received some difficult news about his work situation. His initial reaction--maybe from shock--was all smiles. Mine, on the other hand, was tearful panic and worry. Sometimes, I still believe I'm some kind of a bad luck charm, that whenever I get close to someone, life seems to get messy and more difficult for them. On the other hand, Jeff seemed full of confidence and enthusiasm, rattling off several alternative employment options he could pursue immediately. After a reassuring and mutually supportive phone call, my own anxiety was replaced with resolve. Thorn is right, as we delve more deeply into our Great Work, it's not that we never lose our center, it's that we return to center, we recover our poise and grace, more quickly than we used to.
I love this man. Not just because of his optimism and openness, his kindness and generosity. He has spent a great deal of time these past few months praising my strength and courage, and sometimes, I think, overlooking his own. And so on his behalf I would like to ask you, my dear readers, for your support and encouragement over these next few weeks. Please, keep Jeff in your thoughts and prayers, send him comfort and confidence, whether by energy, deity, spellwork or carrier pigeon. If I know anything about prosperity magic, it's that there is a weaving triad of mutual support at work: security, prosperity, generosity. Generosity is something the Celts were known for: a welcoming, giving spirit. I already know you all possess these in abundance. If, in your daily work, you could light a candle for Jeff, for his family and especially for his children, I know your warmth and positivity will be felt and returned with appreciation and gratitude.
Meanwhile, for those of you with a little extra funds lying around, Jeff does provide some neat services through his website, including beautifully-recorded guided meditations and spiritual name analyses. Please hop on over and check those out, if you're interested; every bit helps! (But don't tell him that I made such a shameless plug for him, okay?)
Times is hard.
Hopefully you already know Jeff Lilly, at least through his insightful writings over at Druid Journal. Jeff is a fellow member of AODA, a dear friend of mine, and a wonderful human being if ever I knew one. Only a few months ago, 'friends' was all we were, but since mid-March, we have become much more than that to one another.Life works in mysterious ways. For the past two months, it seems the churning mechanisms of coincidence that spin this Universe of ours have been conspiring to make us happy. Family and social circumstances seemed perfectly in sync, bringing our lives closer together, smoothing the path before us. If I didn't know better, I would have suspected that we were merely madly in love, but it was more than that. Love couldn't explain why his ex-wife's fiancé's parents happen to live only minutes from me, or why his initial choice for a new apartment fell though just when a place became available that was cheaper and in a better location. Love couldn't explain my sudden surge of motivation and energy, or why all my mind-boggling bad luck seemed to be giving way to pleasant surprises and clear sailing... could it?
As sometimes happens, though, the ride has been getting a bit bumpier lately. Still finalizing the paperwork on his divorce and nailing down plans to move the whole family out to Pittsburgh, this morning Jeff received some difficult news about his work situation. His initial reaction--maybe from shock--was all smiles. Mine, on the other hand, was tearful panic and worry. Sometimes, I still believe I'm some kind of a bad luck charm, that whenever I get close to someone, life seems to get messy and more difficult for them. On the other hand, Jeff seemed full of confidence and enthusiasm, rattling off several alternative employment options he could pursue immediately. After a reassuring and mutually supportive phone call, my own anxiety was replaced with resolve. Thorn is right, as we delve more deeply into our Great Work, it's not that we never lose our center, it's that we return to center, we recover our poise and grace, more quickly than we used to.
I love this man. Not just because of his optimism and openness, his kindness and generosity. He has spent a great deal of time these past few months praising my strength and courage, and sometimes, I think, overlooking his own. And so on his behalf I would like to ask you, my dear readers, for your support and encouragement over these next few weeks. Please, keep Jeff in your thoughts and prayers, send him comfort and confidence, whether by energy, deity, spellwork or carrier pigeon. If I know anything about prosperity magic, it's that there is a weaving triad of mutual support at work: security, prosperity, generosity. Generosity is something the Celts were known for: a welcoming, giving spirit. I already know you all possess these in abundance. If, in your daily work, you could light a candle for Jeff, for his family and especially for his children, I know your warmth and positivity will be felt and returned with appreciation and gratitude.
Meanwhile, for those of you with a little extra funds lying around, Jeff does provide some neat services through his website, including beautifully-recorded guided meditations and spiritual name analyses. Please hop on over and check those out, if you're interested; every bit helps! (But don't tell him that I made such a shameless plug for him, okay?)
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
These Holy Days
Yesterday morning, I woke up to Christmas. Four in the morning, I was warm and buzzing nestled between soft pillows and a billowy comforter, the holiday songs from my dreams still echoing in my sleepy memory. What had I been dreaming? A tiled sauna and a room full of hot cascading showers, a shuffling choir, long curtains of fabric draped in folds and shifting gently in a warm breeze... My bedroom was cool and dark, utterly quiet, as sun, steam and bright colors wound ribbons of anticipation and giddy joy through my mind. Some days just feel like Christmas.
Another hour of light dozing and my alarm was going off. As I dressed and ate breakfast, I caught myself humming "Santa Baby" ...I really do believe in you, let's see if you believe in me... I walked to work through blue twilit dawn, the scent of the late February air--tense with chill, sparkling just slightly under each streetlamp in diffuse wisps of crystalline snow--seeming entwined with hints of peppermint and cinnamon; even the smell of cigarette smoke wafting down early morning city streets reminded me instead of smoldering hearth fires and sap reaching up lazily through the limbs of pines. All morning felt like a holiday. When I wasn't paying attention, I slipped backwards through the calendar, pulsing with gratitude and energy.
My first customer of the morning was a disheveled-looking woman with suitcases and overflowing canvas tote bags piled up around her in the tiny booth where she sat sipping her coffee and fingering an unlit cigarette back and forth across her knuckles. The waitress from the midnight shift shrugged and shook her head. "It's not like she's out of her right mind or anything..." I glanced at the woman grinning dreamily across the dining room. "When she came in, she threw up her arms in the air in a bear-hug," my manager chimed in, "I thought she was going to attack you!" I walked a fresh pot of coffee over and topped off her mug. The woman winked. "It's cold enough out there to shiver my timbers!" I smiled. "That's what we're here for," I said, gesturing gently with the steaming pot.
All morning, the woman sat in her booth, hunched over a newspaper, stepping out sometimes for a smoke. From behind the counter, I could see her bundled, hunched form shifting from foot to foot outside the hazy window, reaching sometimes to tap ash into the street's gutter. Another thin layer of dust covering the dusting of snow and gray hunks of sidewalk salt. Other customers came and went, the usual barrage of coffee, eggs, hot tea and homefries, oatmeal and bagels and french toast and fruit. Some were regulars, catching up on news, asking after my family and sharing stories from the weekend. Others were new faces, or only vaguely familiar, meeting strangers to talk morning business, or sitting alone with their palms cupping the smooth porcelain side of a grande carmel latte. Warmth radiated. My manager kept to the basement, going over the usual Monday morning inventory, and upstairs it was just the one sleepy cook and myself drifting through the oldie tunes playing over the muzak system. Sometimes I sang along softly to myself, feeling the roots of my hair prickle as though radiating heat in a halo of lazy melody.
Midmorning, a soldier came in, dressed in gray sweat fatigues, and sat at a table by himself in the far corner of the dining room. Soldiers make me a little uncomfortable, I admit. "Service" means something so different to me. Courage and loyalty, discipline.... I've known boys who went off after high school to become soldiers, often just for the financial aid or health benefits. Two of them have died because of it--one in war, one from sudden heart failure while training to pass his physicals. Another called me a "childish c*nt" and stopped speaking to me when I joked about anarchy and a community shaped by Gandhi's satyagraha, love-force, instead of a Big Brother military enforcing our interests overseas. These men--mostly men--sit in their uniforms and follow strict protocols of civility, refusing to eat until a commanding officer has begun on his own meal, calling us waitresses "ma'am" as though we were all mothers or teachers. But they have also been trained how to kill, to level a gun or swiftly drop a missile with the same precision and detachment. I am a pacifist, perhaps by nature; I cannot choose war, I cannot choose military even in its most abstracted and ideal form. And so soldiers--unlike police officers, or EMTs, or the local crossing guards--make me feel how deeply I am a civilian, how soft and far I am from a fighter.
I always wonder what they're thinking. As I dropped off this soldier's breakfast--a young man hardly older than myself from the looks of it, and sullen in the frozen morning sunlight cutting down through the long restaurant windows--I smiled and felt my own uncertainty lurking beneath my usual kind and eager inquiries about refills and condiments. I always want them to know that I respect them as human beings, rather than as soldiers. I always want them to feel the aching wish in my heart that they would one day just... give it up, that every one of them would give it up and come home and leave the weaponry to rust. National security be damned. Politics and power-plays be damned. In this small, cozy diner where every scent, every scrape of silverware or drip of the coffee machine, is familiar and resonant... I always want them, for a while, to cease to be fighters and become men again.
With barely a dozen words exchanged between us, eventually the young soldier picked his check up off the table and came to the register to pay. He stood, seemingly distracted and uneasy, as I punched in the amount and he rummaged for change in his wallet. Then from behind him, the disheveled woman was approaching, tapping him softly on the shoulder, muttering something too low for me to hear. "No, ma'am," he replied, looking down at his gray sweats, "Just standard issue." A moment longer the woman stood before him, her old body a good head shorter and a good deal wider and softer than his own muscled and rough beneath the worn gray fabric. Then, she threw her arms up in the air, and drew him into an embrace that seemed to grow long and quiet from the center of her being. For a moment, everything in the dining room stopped. I lowered my eyes.
Then, she shuffled back over to her seat and took up her coffee mug again. I watched the young man out of the corner of my eye as I counted quarters and nickels back to him; once or twice, he glanced over at where the woman sat, as if bewildered or shaken. I wished him a nice day, and he thanked me distractedly. He stepped away from the register, hesitated, then turned slowly towards her booth. "Thank you," was all he said. The woman looked up and grinned her awkward, tooth-rotted grin, split open with caring.
"Pass it on," she said, "Pass on love. We all have to try to become better people."
The young soldier nodded his head, or bowed it, as he walked back out into the cold.
Later, another coworker arrived, picking up my slack as business increased despite the ever-denser snowfall outside. Shafts of sunlight that had cast sharp, long shadows across the carpet earlier in the morning were replaced by monotone grays and whites in slow, low-lying clouds wending their way between buildings and alleys across the street. The old woman was back outside sucking delicately at a cigarette when my coworker glanced at her fort of battered, pudgy suitcases and asked disdainfully, "Who's at booth thirty-three?" thinking it was a bag-lady.
Perhaps she was. "Just a woman getting coffee," I said. I shrugged and shook my head, feeling tears stinging the corners of my wide, humming eyes. "It's not like she's out of her right mind or anything..."
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Plan for Advanced Druidic Study
Since I've formally committed to continuing my degree work within AODA (OBOD's Bardic correspondence course ended up being a bit too touchy-feely for me), I've been giving some thought to what kind of work I want to pursue over the next few years.
Some of it will be guided in part by the AODA Second Degree curriculum, with its focus on the four elements and corresponding emphases: earth: a foundation of continual connection with the natural world and a developing understanding of ecology; fire: more intense and creative engagement with ritual and holy day rites; air: scholarly study of Celtic mythology, Arthurian legend and the history of Revival Druidry; and water: emotional and community development through teaching and mentoring. In addition to these four areas of training, AODA also encourages the development of practical skills in the arts and spiritual crafts by requiring three "spirals" of study in things such as poetry, music, magic, and divination, as well as a "fifth element" (spirit) focus on comparative religion and the theory and history of nature spirituality in particular, in order to develop a broader perspective on the role of Druidry in our own lives and within our contemporary historical-cultural context.
This is all very structured and task-oriented; e.g. "read x number of books on this topic and write an essay y pages long," or "develop n holy day rites and perform them at least z times a year," or "choose a musical instrument and practice p times a week, memorizing q number of songs you feel skilled enough to play in public." In some ways, I very much like this approach, since it sets out very clear, attainable goals to work towards without putting too many restrictions on what exactly each individual will learn from or get out of such work. Of course, there's a general assumption that, for instance, committed regular contact with nature will rub off on a person in terms of appreciation and care, or that the self-discipline required to meditate daily, or the creativity and knowledge needed to write a certain number of self-designed rituals, will have similarly predictable effects, all working together and playing off each other to shape a person walking the uniquely AODA Druidic path while also ensuring they have at least some of the skills necessary to teach newcomers and neophytes, passing the tradition on to others. In some ways, the structure of the AODA degree program works to inculcate and train its Druids in the same way a graduate school program trains its students to become competent professors within the academic institution. (And, as with graduate school, this type of institutional training, despite its benefits, is not cut out for everybody.) Obviously, the part of me that eventually rebelled against the influence of inadvertent or unacknowledged "indoctrination" in my creative writing graduate program struggles, too, from time to time with this aspect of AODA training. However, because I do enjoy the challenge of specific, outlined goals and I believe the process of training and growth in Druidry is valuable in itself, I've decided to take up the challenge and confront whatever obstacles that may come up with a commitment to my own future goals in mind.
As I mentioned, the AODA program is very much task-oriented, and so to help "flesh out" this approach and give it depth, another aspect that will guide my Druidic work over the next few years will be a personal emphasis on "Ovate"-related aspects of spirituality. Although for some reason (not entirely clear to me) AODA very much downplays the traditional (Revival) Druidic division of training into Bardic, Ovate and Druidic levels adopted by groups like OBOD, I feel that these broad categories make a kind of sense to me. Because I first came to Druidry through my "bardic" work with poetry and creative writing (and chose poetry as the "spiral" for my First Degree work), metaphors of music, song, dance, imagery and imagination have echoed strongly through my Druidic study so far. As I continue to explore and grow, however, I find two new interests coming into focus: a fascination with shamanic and trance or dream work, divination and magic; and a growing need to articulate my spirituality in theological and philosophical terms that encompass questions of ethics, justice, politics and metaphysics. These correspond, very roughly, to the emphasis found in Ovate and Druid training. While I will certainly continue to develop the latter on my own (as if I could stop myself!), I've decided that my Second Degree work will benefit from a good dose of shamanic, intuitive exploration. The "spirals" I've chosen (divination, magic and a self-designed "faery spiral") all deal with nonrational, Otherworld aspects of spirituality, learning how to shape consciousness, connect with sacred or trans-mundane beings and energies, and working more closely with liminal experiences in the human life cycle (such as birth, love, grief, death, illness, initiation, etc.).
One way I've thought about this threefold division within Druidry is to imagine the Bards as the poets and story-tellers, the Ovates as what we would think of as "priests" or spiritual counselors, and the Druids as "judges" and advisors in both worldly and spiritual matters. Thinking through AODA's Second Degree curriculum, one thing that strikes me is the important role that mentoring, teaching and group leadership comes to play over the next few years. By the time an Apprentice is ready to become a Druid Companion in AODA, their work has supposedly prepared them for formal ordination and the responsibilities of organizing and leading a chartered Study Group.* The exercises and reading of the Second Degree's Water path place heavy emphasis on encouraging emotional maturity, exploring various models of spiritual development, and learning effective techniques for teaching, coaching and counseling; meanwhile, the Fire path requires students to write, memorize and be able to effectively perform ritual with others (including the Candidate initiation ritual). Once again, in its own task-oriented way, AODA's curriculum works to impart the skills and knowledge a person needs to act competently as a priest or priestess for their local community. Intuitive shamanic and dreamwork seem, to me, to be a natural compliment to these more overt, exoteric leadership skills. After all, how can you help to counsel and guide others without personal exploration and experience of your own.
But this is where I find myself almost immediately running into difficulties. The next two or three years of my Druidic study are fairly well mapped out, with lists of important books, exercises and techniques to pursue and correct, and a given number of hours of "community service" to provide. Not to mention, I have the added benefit of knowing a few people within AODA who have worked through and completed the Second Degree already, who can and often cheerfully do provide advice, encouragement and personal examples from their own lives. But for me, this isn't enough. Instead, I keep asking myself, "What does spiritual growth look like?" There was a time when I thought I knew, or I at least had a kind of ideal to shoot for, to work towards. Now... I find myself honestly unsure. For all its structure and challenge, in many ways the AODA degree program strikes me as imparting barely more than a skill set. Valuable, useful skills, of course, but.... still. I've seen people who can effectively read runes or competently perform moving rituals, but then I've also seen Catholic priests who preach movingly about love and service, and then afterwards go diddle some poor altar boy in the rectory. Not to put too fine a point on it. Certainly, skills are important, but as I read Judy Harrow's book, Spiritual Mentoring: A Pagan Guide, for instance, I read again and again about how necessary it is to encourage real, substantive spiritual growth... and yet nowhere do I find any indication of what this might be or how we might recognize it. So I'm left asking (skill-sets, knowledge-bases and charisma aside): what does spiritual growth look like?
* One thing that bothers me about AODA is that Groves can only be established by Druid Adepts, who are initiated based not on a clearly outlined program of study as with the two previous grades, but according to the whim of the Grand Grove and its members, who must approve a self-designed program (or decide to bestow the title honorarily on people who impress them). This is where hierarchy becomes an issue for me. In theory, this "freedom" of study is meant to encourage self-discipline and commitment, demanding that truly serious students of Druidry prove themselves by taking up the responsibility for their own development after they reach a certain level. In practice, however, it seems to work to keep very few people from attaining to the higher degrees. Instead, it seems people at this point more often "take the iniative" by leaving AODA altogether to establish their own groups or groves (and if/when I reach that point, I will most likely do the same). The current archdruid of the Order often seems quite satisfied (almost suspiciously self-satisfied) to allow members "without the commitment" or who take issue with this hierarchical structure to drop away, move on, or simply stay put at their current level. I find this a shame, since it means that AODA's membership (which consists almost entirely of Candidates and Apprentices) is likely to remain fairly stagnant in the coming decades. I can only hope that, as membership grows to include more younger members and the current leaders finally being to retire, a new and more refreshing attitude might take hold that encourages growth both for the group as a whole and for members personally. Since, as part of my Apprentice initiation, I promised to work to help the AODA community, I will continue to try to be part of that more promising trend.
Some of it will be guided in part by the AODA Second Degree curriculum, with its focus on the four elements and corresponding emphases: earth: a foundation of continual connection with the natural world and a developing understanding of ecology; fire: more intense and creative engagement with ritual and holy day rites; air: scholarly study of Celtic mythology, Arthurian legend and the history of Revival Druidry; and water: emotional and community development through teaching and mentoring. In addition to these four areas of training, AODA also encourages the development of practical skills in the arts and spiritual crafts by requiring three "spirals" of study in things such as poetry, music, magic, and divination, as well as a "fifth element" (spirit) focus on comparative religion and the theory and history of nature spirituality in particular, in order to develop a broader perspective on the role of Druidry in our own lives and within our contemporary historical-cultural context.
This is all very structured and task-oriented; e.g. "read x number of books on this topic and write an essay y pages long," or "develop n holy day rites and perform them at least z times a year," or "choose a musical instrument and practice p times a week, memorizing q number of songs you feel skilled enough to play in public." In some ways, I very much like this approach, since it sets out very clear, attainable goals to work towards without putting too many restrictions on what exactly each individual will learn from or get out of such work. Of course, there's a general assumption that, for instance, committed regular contact with nature will rub off on a person in terms of appreciation and care, or that the self-discipline required to meditate daily, or the creativity and knowledge needed to write a certain number of self-designed rituals, will have similarly predictable effects, all working together and playing off each other to shape a person walking the uniquely AODA Druidic path while also ensuring they have at least some of the skills necessary to teach newcomers and neophytes, passing the tradition on to others. In some ways, the structure of the AODA degree program works to inculcate and train its Druids in the same way a graduate school program trains its students to become competent professors within the academic institution. (And, as with graduate school, this type of institutional training, despite its benefits, is not cut out for everybody.) Obviously, the part of me that eventually rebelled against the influence of inadvertent or unacknowledged "indoctrination" in my creative writing graduate program struggles, too, from time to time with this aspect of AODA training. However, because I do enjoy the challenge of specific, outlined goals and I believe the process of training and growth in Druidry is valuable in itself, I've decided to take up the challenge and confront whatever obstacles that may come up with a commitment to my own future goals in mind.
As I mentioned, the AODA program is very much task-oriented, and so to help "flesh out" this approach and give it depth, another aspect that will guide my Druidic work over the next few years will be a personal emphasis on "Ovate"-related aspects of spirituality. Although for some reason (not entirely clear to me) AODA very much downplays the traditional (Revival) Druidic division of training into Bardic, Ovate and Druidic levels adopted by groups like OBOD, I feel that these broad categories make a kind of sense to me. Because I first came to Druidry through my "bardic" work with poetry and creative writing (and chose poetry as the "spiral" for my First Degree work), metaphors of music, song, dance, imagery and imagination have echoed strongly through my Druidic study so far. As I continue to explore and grow, however, I find two new interests coming into focus: a fascination with shamanic and trance or dream work, divination and magic; and a growing need to articulate my spirituality in theological and philosophical terms that encompass questions of ethics, justice, politics and metaphysics. These correspond, very roughly, to the emphasis found in Ovate and Druid training. While I will certainly continue to develop the latter on my own (as if I could stop myself!), I've decided that my Second Degree work will benefit from a good dose of shamanic, intuitive exploration. The "spirals" I've chosen (divination, magic and a self-designed "faery spiral") all deal with nonrational, Otherworld aspects of spirituality, learning how to shape consciousness, connect with sacred or trans-mundane beings and energies, and working more closely with liminal experiences in the human life cycle (such as birth, love, grief, death, illness, initiation, etc.).
One way I've thought about this threefold division within Druidry is to imagine the Bards as the poets and story-tellers, the Ovates as what we would think of as "priests" or spiritual counselors, and the Druids as "judges" and advisors in both worldly and spiritual matters. Thinking through AODA's Second Degree curriculum, one thing that strikes me is the important role that mentoring, teaching and group leadership comes to play over the next few years. By the time an Apprentice is ready to become a Druid Companion in AODA, their work has supposedly prepared them for formal ordination and the responsibilities of organizing and leading a chartered Study Group.* The exercises and reading of the Second Degree's Water path place heavy emphasis on encouraging emotional maturity, exploring various models of spiritual development, and learning effective techniques for teaching, coaching and counseling; meanwhile, the Fire path requires students to write, memorize and be able to effectively perform ritual with others (including the Candidate initiation ritual). Once again, in its own task-oriented way, AODA's curriculum works to impart the skills and knowledge a person needs to act competently as a priest or priestess for their local community. Intuitive shamanic and dreamwork seem, to me, to be a natural compliment to these more overt, exoteric leadership skills. After all, how can you help to counsel and guide others without personal exploration and experience of your own.
But this is where I find myself almost immediately running into difficulties. The next two or three years of my Druidic study are fairly well mapped out, with lists of important books, exercises and techniques to pursue and correct, and a given number of hours of "community service" to provide. Not to mention, I have the added benefit of knowing a few people within AODA who have worked through and completed the Second Degree already, who can and often cheerfully do provide advice, encouragement and personal examples from their own lives. But for me, this isn't enough. Instead, I keep asking myself, "What does spiritual growth look like?" There was a time when I thought I knew, or I at least had a kind of ideal to shoot for, to work towards. Now... I find myself honestly unsure. For all its structure and challenge, in many ways the AODA degree program strikes me as imparting barely more than a skill set. Valuable, useful skills, of course, but.... still. I've seen people who can effectively read runes or competently perform moving rituals, but then I've also seen Catholic priests who preach movingly about love and service, and then afterwards go diddle some poor altar boy in the rectory. Not to put too fine a point on it. Certainly, skills are important, but as I read Judy Harrow's book, Spiritual Mentoring: A Pagan Guide, for instance, I read again and again about how necessary it is to encourage real, substantive spiritual growth... and yet nowhere do I find any indication of what this might be or how we might recognize it. So I'm left asking (skill-sets, knowledge-bases and charisma aside): what does spiritual growth look like?
* One thing that bothers me about AODA is that Groves can only be established by Druid Adepts, who are initiated based not on a clearly outlined program of study as with the two previous grades, but according to the whim of the Grand Grove and its members, who must approve a self-designed program (or decide to bestow the title honorarily on people who impress them). This is where hierarchy becomes an issue for me. In theory, this "freedom" of study is meant to encourage self-discipline and commitment, demanding that truly serious students of Druidry prove themselves by taking up the responsibility for their own development after they reach a certain level. In practice, however, it seems to work to keep very few people from attaining to the higher degrees. Instead, it seems people at this point more often "take the iniative" by leaving AODA altogether to establish their own groups or groves (and if/when I reach that point, I will most likely do the same). The current archdruid of the Order often seems quite satisfied (almost suspiciously self-satisfied) to allow members "without the commitment" or who take issue with this hierarchical structure to drop away, move on, or simply stay put at their current level. I find this a shame, since it means that AODA's membership (which consists almost entirely of Candidates and Apprentices) is likely to remain fairly stagnant in the coming decades. I can only hope that, as membership grows to include more younger members and the current leaders finally being to retire, a new and more refreshing attitude might take hold that encourages growth both for the group as a whole and for members personally. Since, as part of my Apprentice initiation, I promised to work to help the AODA community, I will continue to try to be part of that more promising trend.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Spiritual Aesthetics: Part IV
This series of posts is, in some ways, an excellent example of the on-going creative process I have been discussing. Publishing each part before I've definitively finished the series as a whole, I find myself often back-tracking and returning to previously discussed ideas in order to clarify before I can move forward again (for instance, I found in the last post a need to continue the in-depth exploration of aesthetics that I had begun in Part II); however, each return, each clarification, is guided by my overall original goal to explore the role of irony in both art and spirituality. Although I had intended Part III to be the final post in this series, in which I finally reached that goal, it reached its natural conclusion (and reasonable length) without arriving. This time, though, I mean to get there.
So: irony. Let's get right down to it.
Irony in Creative Practice
We left off in the last post having developed two fairly useful working descriptions (with handy-dandy diagrams!) of both the scientific and aesthetic creative processes. Plenty of you have probably anticipated where this discussion is headed and have already been pondering the way in which magic, prayer and other spiritual practices fit these models, so I won't belabor some of the more subtle implications here. Abiding by my previous supposition that aesthetics offers a more satisfying metaphor and enlightening comparison for such practices than the scientific method can provide, I would point out what to me seems to be the essential point of clarification, which is: a "work of magic" is not the same as and cannot be identified with either the ritual act or objects of the magical working, or the resulting experiences of the practitioners or recipients of that work. Like a work of art, which cannot be equated merely with either the art object or the experiences it produces, so too does the "magic" itself exist in some kind of difficult-to-define space in between, drifting in and out of potential, acting on and shaping experiences in a mutual exchange.
This new way of understanding the actual "work" of prayer or magic, I believe, resolves the main stumbling block that leads to a sense of irony; it also brings us to a new understanding of what exactly that irony is that deo and others have such difficulty in overcoming. If we look again at the diagram of scientific method, we see that in the place of the more internal and subjective "experience" in the aesthetic process, instead we have "results" in the external world, quantifiable and verifiable through repeated experiments. The relationship between experiment and results, in other words, is always clear and causal in only one direction; whatever the hypotheses that led to the experiment or the conclusions drawn from its subsequent results, the scientist can at least rely on a linear and consistent relationship between the two mind-external aspects of the one-way cycle. But disrupt this cycle, and the whole process falls to pieces.
The difficulty that deo perceives in magical work is precisely the disruption of this causality. Magic and prayer, if they are to mimic a well-constructed scientific experiment, should not only have "results" (rather than mere subjective interpretations of experience) but those results should proceed in a relevant and repeatable manner from specific activities incited in the world beyond our own minds. But the reality is that magic does not work this way at all. At one point during podcast episode #38, deo jokes that the only time two identical spells ever produce the exact same results are if both of them fail to work. (Of course, if we consider art rather than scientific experiment as the more helpful metaphor for magic, we quickly come to understand that spells (and prayers) can fail to work in almost as many ways as they can succeed, depending on the cultural and historical contexts, for instance, and the individuals involved.) Insisting that there is a relationship between magical "experiments" and their "results" similar to the one we find in science, without being able either to describe how that relationship actually works or to produce intended results with any consistency, pushes us into the realm of the ironic, where the disjoint between reality and our expectations or beliefs about reality are distinctly at odds. In short, our sense of irony arises when we correctly perceive that a "work of magic" is not reasonably identified with either the act or the experience, but we willfully ignore this perception because we have no satisfactory alternative explanations.
Since I have provided one, I seem to have once and for all solved the problem of irony.
Just kidding! Actually, by turning our attention once again to art and aesthetics, we discover a plethora of further insights into the matter. Take the concept of "dramatic irony," for example. In dramatic irony, the relative ignorance of the characters in a story is played against the broader knowledge of the audience. The tragedy of Oedipus, for instance, is tragic precisely because we, as an experienced audience familiar with the story and "in" on earlier events forgotten by the protagonist, can see the tragedy coming and the ways in which, with a slight turn of circumstance, it could be prevented. Of course, dramatic irony must be artfully done in order to be effective; a character who is simply too silly or too apathetic to struggle towards knowledge is unlikely to capture an audience's attention. Indeed, it is precisely those characters most concerned with seeking knowledge and awareness (though often they look in all the wrong places) who best provoke a sense of dramatic irony. This is because irony as an aesthetic device not only works with, but calls attention to and relies on the distinction between the "art object" and the audience's experience of it. Rather than seek a linear causal relationship between the two, they are deliberately put into tension with one another. One aspect of this tension is that the art object is governed by its own internally-consistent "rules" and their results, so to speak (these may come from the physical nature of the medium, as mentioned before, as well as established cultural conventions, etc.), and yet the audience engages with these causalities subjectively and imaginatively, as veritable "outsiders," sometimes even seeking (as in dramatic irony especially) a way to circumvent them.
Another example of irony, which can be turned to either tragic or comedic effect, is verbal irony. Here we have an exciting overlap between aesthetics and magic: the ancient Celtic use of satire. To quote (shamefacedly) from Wikipedia: "The essential point is that 'in satire, irony is militant'. This 'militant irony' (or sarcasm) often professes to approve the very things the satirist actually wishes to attack." Once again, we have a deliberate tension cultivated between the art object as apparent praise or celebration, and the artist's intention and audience's experience of just the opposite. The "work" of art and its satirical nature relies on and exists within this disjoint or disruption. The ancient Celtic bards utilized this tension not only for aesthetic, but also for magical purposes. That is, they engaged in magical practices (in this case, composing poetic verse) with an inherent sense of irony, a willful disconnect between action and result (one that usually echoed the faults and failures of the subject of the satire) that in a scientific experiment would have rendered the process meaningless.
I think that modern practitioners of magic and prayer can take heart from the example set by these bards of old, approaching their spiritual work comfortable with their own sense of skepticism and even with a bit of humor. While a "fake it 'til you make it" approach to the scientific method fundamentally compromises the cycle of discovery, the give-and-take nature of aesthetic creativity provides us with an approach to spiritual practice that is more stable, and thus more flexible (as John M. Greer always says, a Druid takes two opposites in tension and seeks to resolve them not by settling for a compromise, but by finding a new, third aspect; that is essentially what this whole series has attempted to do). So what if, for now, your experiences of the power of magic are shaped mostly by your own expectations, or your prayer requests are themselves manifestations of conflicts and obstacles of which you are only subconsciously aware? The fluid relationships between these three aspects of spiritual work ensure that any honest, persistent effort made in one direction will ultimately engage and reaffirm all three.
So: irony. Let's get right down to it.
Irony in Creative Practice
We left off in the last post having developed two fairly useful working descriptions (with handy-dandy diagrams!) of both the scientific and aesthetic creative processes. Plenty of you have probably anticipated where this discussion is headed and have already been pondering the way in which magic, prayer and other spiritual practices fit these models, so I won't belabor some of the more subtle implications here. Abiding by my previous supposition that aesthetics offers a more satisfying metaphor and enlightening comparison for such practices than the scientific method can provide, I would point out what to me seems to be the essential point of clarification, which is: a "work of magic" is not the same as and cannot be identified with either the ritual act or objects of the magical working, or the resulting experiences of the practitioners or recipients of that work. Like a work of art, which cannot be equated merely with either the art object or the experiences it produces, so too does the "magic" itself exist in some kind of difficult-to-define space in between, drifting in and out of potential, acting on and shaping experiences in a mutual exchange.
This new way of understanding the actual "work" of prayer or magic, I believe, resolves the main stumbling block that leads to a sense of irony; it also brings us to a new understanding of what exactly that irony is that deo and others have such difficulty in overcoming. If we look again at the diagram of scientific method, we see that in the place of the more internal and subjective "experience" in the aesthetic process, instead we have "results" in the external world, quantifiable and verifiable through repeated experiments. The relationship between experiment and results, in other words, is always clear and causal in only one direction; whatever the hypotheses that led to the experiment or the conclusions drawn from its subsequent results, the scientist can at least rely on a linear and consistent relationship between the two mind-external aspects of the one-way cycle. But disrupt this cycle, and the whole process falls to pieces.The difficulty that deo perceives in magical work is precisely the disruption of this causality. Magic and prayer, if they are to mimic a well-constructed scientific experiment, should not only have "results" (rather than mere subjective interpretations of experience) but those results should proceed in a relevant and repeatable manner from specific activities incited in the world beyond our own minds. But the reality is that magic does not work this way at all. At one point during podcast episode #38, deo jokes that the only time two identical spells ever produce the exact same results are if both of them fail to work. (Of course, if we consider art rather than scientific experiment as the more helpful metaphor for magic, we quickly come to understand that spells (and prayers) can fail to work in almost as many ways as they can succeed, depending on the cultural and historical contexts, for instance, and the individuals involved.) Insisting that there is a relationship between magical "experiments" and their "results" similar to the one we find in science, without being able either to describe how that relationship actually works or to produce intended results with any consistency, pushes us into the realm of the ironic, where the disjoint between reality and our expectations or beliefs about reality are distinctly at odds. In short, our sense of irony arises when we correctly perceive that a "work of magic" is not reasonably identified with either the act or the experience, but we willfully ignore this perception because we have no satisfactory alternative explanations.
Since I have provided one, I seem to have once and for all solved the problem of irony.
Just kidding! Actually, by turning our attention once again to art and aesthetics, we discover a plethora of further insights into the matter. Take the concept of "dramatic irony," for example. In dramatic irony, the relative ignorance of the characters in a story is played against the broader knowledge of the audience. The tragedy of Oedipus, for instance, is tragic precisely because we, as an experienced audience familiar with the story and "in" on earlier events forgotten by the protagonist, can see the tragedy coming and the ways in which, with a slight turn of circumstance, it could be prevented. Of course, dramatic irony must be artfully done in order to be effective; a character who is simply too silly or too apathetic to struggle towards knowledge is unlikely to capture an audience's attention. Indeed, it is precisely those characters most concerned with seeking knowledge and awareness (though often they look in all the wrong places) who best provoke a sense of dramatic irony. This is because irony as an aesthetic device not only works with, but calls attention to and relies on the distinction between the "art object" and the audience's experience of it. Rather than seek a linear causal relationship between the two, they are deliberately put into tension with one another. One aspect of this tension is that the art object is governed by its own internally-consistent "rules" and their results, so to speak (these may come from the physical nature of the medium, as mentioned before, as well as established cultural conventions, etc.), and yet the audience engages with these causalities subjectively and imaginatively, as veritable "outsiders," sometimes even seeking (as in dramatic irony especially) a way to circumvent them.
Another example of irony, which can be turned to either tragic or comedic effect, is verbal irony. Here we have an exciting overlap between aesthetics and magic: the ancient Celtic use of satire. To quote (shamefacedly) from Wikipedia: "The essential point is that 'in satire, irony is militant'. This 'militant irony' (or sarcasm) often professes to approve the very things the satirist actually wishes to attack." Once again, we have a deliberate tension cultivated between the art object as apparent praise or celebration, and the artist's intention and audience's experience of just the opposite. The "work" of art and its satirical nature relies on and exists within this disjoint or disruption. The ancient Celtic bards utilized this tension not only for aesthetic, but also for magical purposes. That is, they engaged in magical practices (in this case, composing poetic verse) with an inherent sense of irony, a willful disconnect between action and result (one that usually echoed the faults and failures of the subject of the satire) that in a scientific experiment would have rendered the process meaningless.I think that modern practitioners of magic and prayer can take heart from the example set by these bards of old, approaching their spiritual work comfortable with their own sense of skepticism and even with a bit of humor. While a "fake it 'til you make it" approach to the scientific method fundamentally compromises the cycle of discovery, the give-and-take nature of aesthetic creativity provides us with an approach to spiritual practice that is more stable, and thus more flexible (as John M. Greer always says, a Druid takes two opposites in tension and seeks to resolve them not by settling for a compromise, but by finding a new, third aspect; that is essentially what this whole series has attempted to do). So what if, for now, your experiences of the power of magic are shaped mostly by your own expectations, or your prayer requests are themselves manifestations of conflicts and obstacles of which you are only subconsciously aware? The fluid relationships between these three aspects of spiritual work ensure that any honest, persistent effort made in one direction will ultimately engage and reaffirm all three.
Note of possible interest: For the last three or so paragraphs of this post, I've had an increasingly intense sensation of deja vu which has made it difficult to finish writing. Has anyone already written this before (or have I)? On the other hand, this may simply be because I'm tired and have contemplated these ideas to near exhaustion over the past week and a half. I hope this series has been interesting. I now return you to your regularly scheduled spontaneity.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Spiritual Aesthetics: Part III
The parallels that artistic endeavors have with prayer and magic are really quite remarkable. And yet, few people would argue that there is an inherent "irony" that makes the creativity of artistic work either impossible or ultimately meaningless. Why not?
Well for one thing, art is everywhere. Now I don't mean "everywhere" as in "everything or anything is art." What I mean is, we are surrounded by countless examples of art, every day, in countless aspects of our culture. Even when artistic or creative practice may seem strange, irrational or just plain silly (which indeed it is often believed to be, if stereotypes of the hippie-dippy or neurotic starving artist are any indication), the fruits of such labors are everywhere for us to see and evaluate for ourselves. Most of us, spiritual or not, have had moving experiences of art and can understand, at least to some degree, the persistent life of a truly great work that remains relevant and striking and meaningful, that transcends its original cultural context. In light of myriad examples and our own personal encounters with honest-to-goodness works of art, as well as seasoned artists and instructors willing and able to offer guidance and advice, it is easier for young aspiring artists to "fake it 'til they make it" (mimicking good habits of artistic practice, cultivating a self-image as a "creative type," and producing a lot of awful poetry or lopsided pottery before learning how to find their own voice and perfect their technique) without the problem of irony arising.
Unlike artists, however, today's practitioners of magic especially, and those who engage in serious prayer to a lesser degree, have the burden of striking out into the nonrational world of personal spiritual practice pretty much on their own, with very few experienced role models and even fewer widely-accepted examples of effective magical work to guide them. While it's no surprise when the work of a beginning artist sometimes flops or flounders, those first exploring magic and prayer are often quickly discouraged (by their own inner critics, if not more forcefully by the skepticism of others). A sense of situational or even cosmic irony can set in, as our circumstances or the Universe itself seem to brashly contradict our plans and perceptions. But in some ways, this feeling is not so much irony (despite Alanis Morissette positing otherwise), as it is frustration and doubt, and can be overcome with encouragement, self-discipline, persistence and patience.
On the other hand, I think deo would agree that when he speaks of irony, it is not the frustration of failed prayer or magic that he means, but the suspicion that even when spells and such seem to work, they do not work for the reasons we might believe. This can happen with art as well. Imagine, for example, that one night you and a friend decide to go out to a new club where live bands perform experimental jazz. Your friend sits there enraptured, apparently grooving to what, to you, sounds mostly like poorly-coordinated noise. You might wonder, "Is this really 'art'? Is my friend really having an aesthetic experience, or is he just 'fooling himself' into believing he is because of his expectations about jazz?" In order to answer these questions and put to rest this particular type of irony, we need to look more closely at the creative process itself and how it works, in science, in aesthetics, and in spiritual practices like prayer and magic.
The Scientific & Aesthetic Processes, With Helpful Visual Aids
In episode #38 of deo's Shadow, deo ponders the relationship between science and magic. He rightly comes to the conclusion that magic cannot hope to compete with science "on its own terms," that is, offering satisfying explanations for physical causal relationships in the material world. But he struggles to offer an alternative way of conceiving of magic (and, by extension, other kinds of creative spiritual practice like prayer), and from within this lacuna of adequate metaphor, irony--a sense that what we believe about the world is distinctly different from actual reality--is grudgingly born. In order to explore deo's scientific metaphor more closely, and discover a better theory for prayer and magic, I've made some charts. (Yes, that's right, charts. Aren't you impressed?)
This first chart (figure 1, left) is an illustration of the scientific method as it's most commonly understood and practiced. A scientist formulates an hypothesis that she wants to test, develops an experiment to test it, and gathers results by careful observation. From these results she works towards refining her original hypothesis, postulating about possible conclusions she can draw from her results, and the cycle begins again. The exact method of gathering results may vary, of course; sometimes, instead of setting up a particular experiment, a scientist (a biologist studying the behavior of black bears, for instance) may do observations in the field, recording events and their circumstances as they arise and from these compiling statistical data. But the process is essentially the same. If we think of the vertical axis of the chart as representing the continuum from the "mind-internal" realm of logic and abstract ideas to the "mind-external" world of physical reality, we can see that the scientific method cycles through both: the experiment and results of that experiment occur in the concrete, material world, while the scientist develops and later analyses her hypotheses using the rational, abstracting capacity of her conscious mind. Of course, the subconscious does play a role in the scientific process (albeit an oft ignored or underemphasized one), in getting the scientist from an abstract theory to a practical test of that theory, and again from the raw data of results to their hypothetical implications. But generally, the process of the scientific method focuses on the rational mind gaining theoretical knowledge about the physical world, moving primarily in a single direction, as shown.
This process works for science; however, a pictorial representation of the aesthetic process must be tweaked to suit (figure 2, right). One reason this is so, is the widely acknowledged fact that an "art object" (i.e. the physical painting, sculpture, text or performance) is not identical to the "work of art." Rather, a work of art must involve a person's aesthetic experience; in other words, an art object only becomes a "work of art" when it is engaged by a viewer (or listener, or what have you). In some ways, then, a work of art is always in flux, surfacing into realized existence when witnessed and then sinking back into a state of potential. (I realize this is a difficult concept to grasp, so some further examples might help. A musical score, for instance, is an art object, but it does not become a work of art until it is played, even if the musician himself is the only one around to hear it. Likewise, in my living room I have a whole shelfful of poetry books; the poems in these pages exist in a state of potential, as textual "art objects" lurking between the covers, but were I to open one of these books, flip to a page and read one of these poems, either silently or aloud, I would experience the poem as a "work of art." It helps to think of "art objects" as dense things that need to be "activated" like some science-fiction device, while the "works of art" are just that, works, activities, experiences that are going on.) Yet a work of art is not identical to or synonymous with a person's experience. The same work of art--the same song, story or drama--can be experienced in many different ways by different people, or even by the same person at different times and under different circumstances.
Thus we have an aesthetic process that is not a unidirectional cycle from abstract to concrete, internal to external, as we did with the scientific method. Instead, at each point in the aesthetic process, we have an intimate exchange. As an artist works to make a piece of art, he endeavors to move his own abstract ideas into the realm of the concrete, but as we explored in the last post, the concrete world of particulars has an equally strong influence on shaping the artist and his intentions. Meanwhile, a given art object will elicit experiences in those who witness it, but as we've already discussed, the experiences (past and present) of these witnesses will themselves influence the art object in transforming it into or engaging it as a work of art. In the creative process, the artist plays the part both of creator and witness as he shuffles and sidesteps towards a final product, sometimes allowing the medium of the work to guide him, and sometimes stepping back and evaluating his own experiences of the object to see whether or not he is expressing or communicating his intentions effectively. (Here we see how both interpretations of the relationship between artist and medium play a role in the process.) What we find is a fascinating, weaving triad of give-and-take (my Druidic self revels in this triple aspect!), and within all this, the "work of art" remains in a kind of misty state in the center, changing and responding, drifting in and out of realization.
Coming soon... "Spiritual Aesthetics: Part IV: Irony in Creative Practice"
Well for one thing, art is everywhere. Now I don't mean "everywhere" as in "everything or anything is art." What I mean is, we are surrounded by countless examples of art, every day, in countless aspects of our culture. Even when artistic or creative practice may seem strange, irrational or just plain silly (which indeed it is often believed to be, if stereotypes of the hippie-dippy or neurotic starving artist are any indication), the fruits of such labors are everywhere for us to see and evaluate for ourselves. Most of us, spiritual or not, have had moving experiences of art and can understand, at least to some degree, the persistent life of a truly great work that remains relevant and striking and meaningful, that transcends its original cultural context. In light of myriad examples and our own personal encounters with honest-to-goodness works of art, as well as seasoned artists and instructors willing and able to offer guidance and advice, it is easier for young aspiring artists to "fake it 'til they make it" (mimicking good habits of artistic practice, cultivating a self-image as a "creative type," and producing a lot of awful poetry or lopsided pottery before learning how to find their own voice and perfect their technique) without the problem of irony arising.
Unlike artists, however, today's practitioners of magic especially, and those who engage in serious prayer to a lesser degree, have the burden of striking out into the nonrational world of personal spiritual practice pretty much on their own, with very few experienced role models and even fewer widely-accepted examples of effective magical work to guide them. While it's no surprise when the work of a beginning artist sometimes flops or flounders, those first exploring magic and prayer are often quickly discouraged (by their own inner critics, if not more forcefully by the skepticism of others). A sense of situational or even cosmic irony can set in, as our circumstances or the Universe itself seem to brashly contradict our plans and perceptions. But in some ways, this feeling is not so much irony (despite Alanis Morissette positing otherwise), as it is frustration and doubt, and can be overcome with encouragement, self-discipline, persistence and patience.
On the other hand, I think deo would agree that when he speaks of irony, it is not the frustration of failed prayer or magic that he means, but the suspicion that even when spells and such seem to work, they do not work for the reasons we might believe. This can happen with art as well. Imagine, for example, that one night you and a friend decide to go out to a new club where live bands perform experimental jazz. Your friend sits there enraptured, apparently grooving to what, to you, sounds mostly like poorly-coordinated noise. You might wonder, "Is this really 'art'? Is my friend really having an aesthetic experience, or is he just 'fooling himself' into believing he is because of his expectations about jazz?" In order to answer these questions and put to rest this particular type of irony, we need to look more closely at the creative process itself and how it works, in science, in aesthetics, and in spiritual practices like prayer and magic.
The Scientific & Aesthetic Processes, With Helpful Visual Aids
In episode #38 of deo's Shadow, deo ponders the relationship between science and magic. He rightly comes to the conclusion that magic cannot hope to compete with science "on its own terms," that is, offering satisfying explanations for physical causal relationships in the material world. But he struggles to offer an alternative way of conceiving of magic (and, by extension, other kinds of creative spiritual practice like prayer), and from within this lacuna of adequate metaphor, irony--a sense that what we believe about the world is distinctly different from actual reality--is grudgingly born. In order to explore deo's scientific metaphor more closely, and discover a better theory for prayer and magic, I've made some charts. (Yes, that's right, charts. Aren't you impressed?)
This first chart (figure 1, left) is an illustration of the scientific method as it's most commonly understood and practiced. A scientist formulates an hypothesis that she wants to test, develops an experiment to test it, and gathers results by careful observation. From these results she works towards refining her original hypothesis, postulating about possible conclusions she can draw from her results, and the cycle begins again. The exact method of gathering results may vary, of course; sometimes, instead of setting up a particular experiment, a scientist (a biologist studying the behavior of black bears, for instance) may do observations in the field, recording events and their circumstances as they arise and from these compiling statistical data. But the process is essentially the same. If we think of the vertical axis of the chart as representing the continuum from the "mind-internal" realm of logic and abstract ideas to the "mind-external" world of physical reality, we can see that the scientific method cycles through both: the experiment and results of that experiment occur in the concrete, material world, while the scientist develops and later analyses her hypotheses using the rational, abstracting capacity of her conscious mind. Of course, the subconscious does play a role in the scientific process (albeit an oft ignored or underemphasized one), in getting the scientist from an abstract theory to a practical test of that theory, and again from the raw data of results to their hypothetical implications. But generally, the process of the scientific method focuses on the rational mind gaining theoretical knowledge about the physical world, moving primarily in a single direction, as shown.This process works for science; however, a pictorial representation of the aesthetic process must be tweaked to suit (figure 2, right). One reason this is so, is the widely acknowledged fact that an "art object" (i.e. the physical painting, sculpture, text or performance) is not identical to the "work of art." Rather, a work of art must involve a person's aesthetic experience; in other words, an art object only becomes a "work of art" when it is engaged by a viewer (or listener, or what have you). In some ways, then, a work of art is always in flux, surfacing into realized existence when witnessed and then sinking back into a state of potential. (I realize this is a difficult concept to grasp, so some further examples might help. A musical score, for instance, is an art object, but it does not become a work of art until it is played, even if the musician himself is the only one around to hear it. Likewise, in my living room I have a whole shelfful of poetry books; the poems in these pages exist in a state of potential, as textual "art objects" lurking between the covers, but were I to open one of these books, flip to a page and read one of these poems, either silently or aloud, I would experience the poem as a "work of art." It helps to think of "art objects" as dense things that need to be "activated" like some science-fiction device, while the "works of art" are just that, works, activities, experiences that are going on.) Yet a work of art is not identical to or synonymous with a person's experience. The same work of art--the same song, story or drama--can be experienced in many different ways by different people, or even by the same person at different times and under different circumstances.Thus we have an aesthetic process that is not a unidirectional cycle from abstract to concrete, internal to external, as we did with the scientific method. Instead, at each point in the aesthetic process, we have an intimate exchange. As an artist works to make a piece of art, he endeavors to move his own abstract ideas into the realm of the concrete, but as we explored in the last post, the concrete world of particulars has an equally strong influence on shaping the artist and his intentions. Meanwhile, a given art object will elicit experiences in those who witness it, but as we've already discussed, the experiences (past and present) of these witnesses will themselves influence the art object in transforming it into or engaging it as a work of art. In the creative process, the artist plays the part both of creator and witness as he shuffles and sidesteps towards a final product, sometimes allowing the medium of the work to guide him, and sometimes stepping back and evaluating his own experiences of the object to see whether or not he is expressing or communicating his intentions effectively. (Here we see how both interpretations of the relationship between artist and medium play a role in the process.) What we find is a fascinating, weaving triad of give-and-take (my Druidic self revels in this triple aspect!), and within all this, the "work of art" remains in a kind of misty state in the center, changing and responding, drifting in and out of realization.
Coming soon... "Spiritual Aesthetics: Part IV: Irony in Creative Practice"
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Spiritual Aesthetics: Part II
I ended the last post with the possibility that deo's sense of irony is justified, and magic is merely a kind of "fooling ourselves" to achieve pragmatic ends. However, I find this conclusion to be unsatisfactory, not exactly inaccurate but imprecise. Last year, I tried to tackle this issue by thinking about chance and coincidence and how we endeavor to "make meaning" from such apparent chaos through things like repeated ritual and intentional aesthetic action. While deo speaks of Paganism as "an inherently literary perspective"--insofar as it "moves the heart and stirs the soul" through the performance art of song, dance and ritual, as well as its living mythology--when I talk about aesthetics, I means something a bit different. (It may be that "aesthetics" is not even the best word, but I'll continue to use it for now.) For me, magic and prayer, and Pagan spirituality more generally, have less to do with the aesthetic experiences of the person viewing art, and much more to do with the experiences of a person making or creating art, the artist himself. From the time I began studying magic, it has always struck me as deeply involved with metaphors of art-making and creativity. Indeed, this is one reason why I sought out an "alternative spirituality" in Druidry, a path that acknowledges the experiences of the artist and bard, the poet and performer, as powerful metaphors for a life of Spirit.
Art & the Unconscious
One thing an artist knows for sure is that media put up resistance. A musician may imagine a melody silently in his own mind, and then sit down at his keyboard or guitar and discover that a particular chord progression or auditory effect simply will not work as he first conceived, while others fall into place as he experiments and explores the instrument. A sculptor may begin with a lump of clay or rock, intending to create this piece or that, and find that as the work evolves, it has a kind of "will of its own," a shape that wants to speak or move in its own way, regardless of the maker's original goals. Many artists and creative makers of all kinds have experienced that strange thrill of seeming to channel a "greater will" or inspiring vision, of feeling something "take over" and lead them to create works more deeply or complexly significant, more subtle or substantial, than they had first imagined. Instead of overcoming this media resistance with practice (as a good scientist might design ever more accurate experiments to test her hypothesis), the more experienced artists learn to trust this relationship with the medium of their art, listening as much as acting, following as much as imposing as the work takes form.
There are two ways (at least) to understand this relationship between artist and medium. One is to understand that the mind, especially the planning, conceiving, theorizing role of the mind, tends toward abstractions, while physical reality manifests in particulars. Hence, any time we make something, we are trying to move something from the mind (where it exists as an idea, an abstraction) into the physical mind-external world, where it absolutely must manifest as a particular. Even these ideas that I'm communicating right now are expressed through the particulars of each word, sentence, paragraph--that is, in the particular linear text as I'm writing and you're reading it. (As an example: I rewrote that last sentence several times in an attempt to express my intended abstract idea clearly, each time getting closer as the particular words changed; meanwhile, my idea itself became clearer as a result of this rewriting and struggling towards articulation. I'll talk later on about why this is important.) In short, every time we endeavor to move abstractions into the realm of particulars, we're bound to experience a kind of resistance, almost like a bottle-neck effect, a focusing or narrowing down (but also, because of the infinite interrelationships possible among particulars, an unexpected blooming or expansion when we make it to the "other side").
Another way to understand this relationship is to look at the mind itself. Most people are generally familiar with the concept of a "conscious" mind, and a "subconscious" or "unconscious." When artists talk about "being inspired" or feeling guided by some wiser voice, we might consider this to be an expression of their subconscious mind asserting itself. The unconscious mind is believed to be the heart of what people might call "intuition," the ability to sense or recognize patterns and to respond to them with more fluidity and flexibility than the deliberate control of the conscious mind. When making art or tapping into the creative capacity in other ways, the artist may begin with a conscious, deliberate idea or goal, but it is the unconscious mind--the aspect of himself that can intuit patterns and navigate the complicated traffic-jam between abstraction and manifestation--that guides him towards the final artistic expression.
Now think again, for a moment, about the activity of prayer or spellwork. We determined that these acts are different from the scientific experiment, in which an experimenter controls variables and incites chains of reaction exclusively in the mind-external world. Instead, magic and prayer rely on a paradox of "willed surrender," in which the practitioner both takes deliberate action and releases an intention into the chaos of the world, to be worked out by some "higher" or farther-reaching being or energy.* We can see, now, that this activity is startlingly similar to the activity of making art and then sharing that art with others.
The artist, like the supplicant or magician, formulates a goal or pursues an idea or concept. He does so by engaging with particular media and structuring that engagement in particular ways: he may have a lucky paintbrush or pen, a studio or office set aside and dedicated to his artistic work, even a few unrelated mundane routines (like washing dishes or sitting on a park bench counting the number of passers-by wearing hats) to ease him into each creative session. As a result of pursuing his creative goals, he encounters complications and messiness, in other words resistance, which shape the way in which his intentions manifest (utilizing these nonrational or nonsensical activities often busies the conscious mind, freeing up the subconscious to deal with this resistance more competently). At the same time, he finds that with a patient "willed surrender" to the process, the end result of his labors may provide greater insight than the original abstract goal could have encompassed. Once "released" into the world, performed or published or in other ways provided with a larger public audience, the work of art may also affect people in ways that the artist couldn't have predicted.
These similarities make art an excellent metaphor for certain aspects of the spiritual life, such as prayer and magic. And like all useful metaphors, the more we explore the comparison in depth, the more clarity it brings to some sticking points that crop up in discussions, of magic in particular, in the Pagan and Druid communities. One stumbling block is, for instance, the urge to define "magic" in such broad terms that the concept loses a lot of its practical meaning. People have often done this with art, as well, insisting that "anything can be art," especially if it's pretty and moves people. But this definition neither distinguishes artistic works from sentiment, propaganda or coincidence, nor provides a useful understanding for the aspiring artist about the actual creative process of which a given art object is merely the end result. Those studying magic for the first time may encounter similar difficulties when confronted with explanations that portray magical practice as either anything that "feels enchanted," or as the head-games of psychoanalysis blurred and complicated with mystical language. Beginners may become frustrated when broad, flimsy definitions fail to give them a working grasp of how to hone and improve their skills; they may even throw their hands up and declare the entire endeavor pointless.
All of this, of course, leads us back, again, to the problem of irony. When we find ourselves working with inadequate definitions and flimsy metaphors, can we "fake it 'til we make it"? Is this somehow disingenuous, or merely pragmatic? In the next post, I'll continue to explore the metaphor of art and aesthetics to see what it may bring to light with regards to this nagging trouble.
Art & the Unconscious
One thing an artist knows for sure is that media put up resistance. A musician may imagine a melody silently in his own mind, and then sit down at his keyboard or guitar and discover that a particular chord progression or auditory effect simply will not work as he first conceived, while others fall into place as he experiments and explores the instrument. A sculptor may begin with a lump of clay or rock, intending to create this piece or that, and find that as the work evolves, it has a kind of "will of its own," a shape that wants to speak or move in its own way, regardless of the maker's original goals. Many artists and creative makers of all kinds have experienced that strange thrill of seeming to channel a "greater will" or inspiring vision, of feeling something "take over" and lead them to create works more deeply or complexly significant, more subtle or substantial, than they had first imagined. Instead of overcoming this media resistance with practice (as a good scientist might design ever more accurate experiments to test her hypothesis), the more experienced artists learn to trust this relationship with the medium of their art, listening as much as acting, following as much as imposing as the work takes form.
There are two ways (at least) to understand this relationship between artist and medium. One is to understand that the mind, especially the planning, conceiving, theorizing role of the mind, tends toward abstractions, while physical reality manifests in particulars. Hence, any time we make something, we are trying to move something from the mind (where it exists as an idea, an abstraction) into the physical mind-external world, where it absolutely must manifest as a particular. Even these ideas that I'm communicating right now are expressed through the particulars of each word, sentence, paragraph--that is, in the particular linear text as I'm writing and you're reading it. (As an example: I rewrote that last sentence several times in an attempt to express my intended abstract idea clearly, each time getting closer as the particular words changed; meanwhile, my idea itself became clearer as a result of this rewriting and struggling towards articulation. I'll talk later on about why this is important.) In short, every time we endeavor to move abstractions into the realm of particulars, we're bound to experience a kind of resistance, almost like a bottle-neck effect, a focusing or narrowing down (but also, because of the infinite interrelationships possible among particulars, an unexpected blooming or expansion when we make it to the "other side").
Another way to understand this relationship is to look at the mind itself. Most people are generally familiar with the concept of a "conscious" mind, and a "subconscious" or "unconscious." When artists talk about "being inspired" or feeling guided by some wiser voice, we might consider this to be an expression of their subconscious mind asserting itself. The unconscious mind is believed to be the heart of what people might call "intuition," the ability to sense or recognize patterns and to respond to them with more fluidity and flexibility than the deliberate control of the conscious mind. When making art or tapping into the creative capacity in other ways, the artist may begin with a conscious, deliberate idea or goal, but it is the unconscious mind--the aspect of himself that can intuit patterns and navigate the complicated traffic-jam between abstraction and manifestation--that guides him towards the final artistic expression.
Now think again, for a moment, about the activity of prayer or spellwork. We determined that these acts are different from the scientific experiment, in which an experimenter controls variables and incites chains of reaction exclusively in the mind-external world. Instead, magic and prayer rely on a paradox of "willed surrender," in which the practitioner both takes deliberate action and releases an intention into the chaos of the world, to be worked out by some "higher" or farther-reaching being or energy.* We can see, now, that this activity is startlingly similar to the activity of making art and then sharing that art with others.
The artist, like the supplicant or magician, formulates a goal or pursues an idea or concept. He does so by engaging with particular media and structuring that engagement in particular ways: he may have a lucky paintbrush or pen, a studio or office set aside and dedicated to his artistic work, even a few unrelated mundane routines (like washing dishes or sitting on a park bench counting the number of passers-by wearing hats) to ease him into each creative session. As a result of pursuing his creative goals, he encounters complications and messiness, in other words resistance, which shape the way in which his intentions manifest (utilizing these nonrational or nonsensical activities often busies the conscious mind, freeing up the subconscious to deal with this resistance more competently). At the same time, he finds that with a patient "willed surrender" to the process, the end result of his labors may provide greater insight than the original abstract goal could have encompassed. Once "released" into the world, performed or published or in other ways provided with a larger public audience, the work of art may also affect people in ways that the artist couldn't have predicted.
These similarities make art an excellent metaphor for certain aspects of the spiritual life, such as prayer and magic. And like all useful metaphors, the more we explore the comparison in depth, the more clarity it brings to some sticking points that crop up in discussions, of magic in particular, in the Pagan and Druid communities. One stumbling block is, for instance, the urge to define "magic" in such broad terms that the concept loses a lot of its practical meaning. People have often done this with art, as well, insisting that "anything can be art," especially if it's pretty and moves people. But this definition neither distinguishes artistic works from sentiment, propaganda or coincidence, nor provides a useful understanding for the aspiring artist about the actual creative process of which a given art object is merely the end result. Those studying magic for the first time may encounter similar difficulties when confronted with explanations that portray magical practice as either anything that "feels enchanted," or as the head-games of psychoanalysis blurred and complicated with mystical language. Beginners may become frustrated when broad, flimsy definitions fail to give them a working grasp of how to hone and improve their skills; they may even throw their hands up and declare the entire endeavor pointless.
All of this, of course, leads us back, again, to the problem of irony. When we find ourselves working with inadequate definitions and flimsy metaphors, can we "fake it 'til we make it"? Is this somehow disingenuous, or merely pragmatic? In the next post, I'll continue to explore the metaphor of art and aesthetics to see what it may bring to light with regards to this nagging trouble.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Spiritual Aesthetics: Part I
The other day while at lunch, I overheard two men talking at a table nearby. One man said to the other, "So I prayed, you know, I asked God, 'Lord, if this woman isn't right for me, give me a sign. And He did, the next day...'" The man leaned in towards his friend and lowered his voice, so the "sign" he had received was lost in the surrounding murmur of the restaurant. But it got me thinking about prayer, magic and my recent contemplations on theology and irony.
It seems to me that the arguments against the efficacy of prayer and the reality of magic run much the same way: how can you know that what happened as a result of the prayer or spell wouldn't have happened anyway? And, if you don't know for sure that they wouldn't have, what is the point of praying/casting spells? Wouldn't it be just as effective to wait and see? These questions are not limited in their implications to the reality of magic and prayer alone, but concern the more general question of how a spiritual life--a life of spiritual activity in any form--can play a real, meaningful role in our practical, everyday lives.
Independence & Control
This, I think, is what deo meant when he talked about a "mind-independent universe": a universe that functions according to its own objective and established laws, laws that to some extent must be engaged on their own terms, not bent to the will or passing whim of any given person. According to this view, if prayer or magic are to "work" in any meaningful way, they must provide the tools for the practitioner to do something to external reality, not merely reframe the way in which that reality, as it happens, is interpreted. A scientist developing an experiment, for instance, may have a particular hypothesis in mind, and this will inevitably affect the way in which she arranges the testing of that hypothesis or interprets the results, but she is still actively engaging a "resistant" external reality, she is still doing something to a world that is (or that she perceives as being, in this context anyway) beyond her own mind. One important aspect of a scientific experiment is that variables are controlled and particular activities incited in order to observe the results. The scientist can say with a good degree of certainty that, if she hadn't lit that bunsen burner, that mixture in the beaker wouldn't have boiled over (this tells her the boiling point is apparently much lower than she hypothesized, but she can still be fairly sure that the mix wouldn't have boiled over on its own had she done nothing).
On the other hand, people who work spells or pray to deity are in some very specific ways relinquishing control, releasing their hopes and intentions into the mess of chance and circumstance or putting their faith in the capable hands of a "higher power," whatever that may be. When the man at the restaurant prayed to God to give him a sign, this act was at once an act of will (intentionally invoking the help of deity) and of vulnerability and release (relinquishing control of the situation to a supposed greater perspective). Likewise, a person who works a spell takes particular actions with specific intention (usually invoking deity, shaping energy through ritual acts, or both) while at the same time "releasing that intention" to work its own way out to manifest the intended goal. Because these acts involve a kind of paradox of willed surrender, there will always be a question of what really caused the results to manifest. Certainly doing nothing is also a form of relinquishing or surrendering control. Why make the willed effort, why organize it according to ritual or traditional recitations? If it was going to happen anyway, what role does the act of prayer or magic play?
My answer to this question is, in part: many things "happen anyway." In fact, things are "happening anyway" all the time. Often times, the same thing will "happen anyway" repeatedly, without a given individual either noticing or caring. Then again, many things don't happen at all, and their persistence in not happening can be painful, joyful, irrelevant, any combination of complex emotional and intellectual responses. Clearly, the correct frame of mind, or rather a mind or awareness that is receptive to certain possibilities as opposed to others, plays a large part in how we interpret all these happenings and their interrelationships. Acknowledging this simple reality--that our "frame of mind," for lack of a better term, inevitably affects how we interpret our experiences--may seem to lead us inevitably to the conclusion that magic and prayer really are merely ways of "changing your own mind," and don't actually do anything to change the external, objective or "mind-independent" world. If we accept this opinion at its most obvious, without probing any deeper, we may come to feel that needling sense of irony that deo mentions, engaging in a kind of play-acting, performing acts that we do not think have any meaningful effect on or relationship to the world outside our own brains.
Coming soon... "Spiritual Aesthetics: Part II: Art & the Unconscious"
It seems to me that the arguments against the efficacy of prayer and the reality of magic run much the same way: how can you know that what happened as a result of the prayer or spell wouldn't have happened anyway? And, if you don't know for sure that they wouldn't have, what is the point of praying/casting spells? Wouldn't it be just as effective to wait and see? These questions are not limited in their implications to the reality of magic and prayer alone, but concern the more general question of how a spiritual life--a life of spiritual activity in any form--can play a real, meaningful role in our practical, everyday lives.
Independence & Control
This, I think, is what deo meant when he talked about a "mind-independent universe": a universe that functions according to its own objective and established laws, laws that to some extent must be engaged on their own terms, not bent to the will or passing whim of any given person. According to this view, if prayer or magic are to "work" in any meaningful way, they must provide the tools for the practitioner to do something to external reality, not merely reframe the way in which that reality, as it happens, is interpreted. A scientist developing an experiment, for instance, may have a particular hypothesis in mind, and this will inevitably affect the way in which she arranges the testing of that hypothesis or interprets the results, but she is still actively engaging a "resistant" external reality, she is still doing something to a world that is (or that she perceives as being, in this context anyway) beyond her own mind. One important aspect of a scientific experiment is that variables are controlled and particular activities incited in order to observe the results. The scientist can say with a good degree of certainty that, if she hadn't lit that bunsen burner, that mixture in the beaker wouldn't have boiled over (this tells her the boiling point is apparently much lower than she hypothesized, but she can still be fairly sure that the mix wouldn't have boiled over on its own had she done nothing).
On the other hand, people who work spells or pray to deity are in some very specific ways relinquishing control, releasing their hopes and intentions into the mess of chance and circumstance or putting their faith in the capable hands of a "higher power," whatever that may be. When the man at the restaurant prayed to God to give him a sign, this act was at once an act of will (intentionally invoking the help of deity) and of vulnerability and release (relinquishing control of the situation to a supposed greater perspective). Likewise, a person who works a spell takes particular actions with specific intention (usually invoking deity, shaping energy through ritual acts, or both) while at the same time "releasing that intention" to work its own way out to manifest the intended goal. Because these acts involve a kind of paradox of willed surrender, there will always be a question of what really caused the results to manifest. Certainly doing nothing is also a form of relinquishing or surrendering control. Why make the willed effort, why organize it according to ritual or traditional recitations? If it was going to happen anyway, what role does the act of prayer or magic play?
My answer to this question is, in part: many things "happen anyway." In fact, things are "happening anyway" all the time. Often times, the same thing will "happen anyway" repeatedly, without a given individual either noticing or caring. Then again, many things don't happen at all, and their persistence in not happening can be painful, joyful, irrelevant, any combination of complex emotional and intellectual responses. Clearly, the correct frame of mind, or rather a mind or awareness that is receptive to certain possibilities as opposed to others, plays a large part in how we interpret all these happenings and their interrelationships. Acknowledging this simple reality--that our "frame of mind," for lack of a better term, inevitably affects how we interpret our experiences--may seem to lead us inevitably to the conclusion that magic and prayer really are merely ways of "changing your own mind," and don't actually do anything to change the external, objective or "mind-independent" world. If we accept this opinion at its most obvious, without probing any deeper, we may come to feel that needling sense of irony that deo mentions, engaging in a kind of play-acting, performing acts that we do not think have any meaningful effect on or relationship to the world outside our own brains.
Coming soon... "Spiritual Aesthetics: Part II: Art & the Unconscious"
Monday, March 31, 2008
A Fool's Chance: Coincidence & Magic
[What follows is an open letter to deò and Mandy, about the most recent episode of their podcast deò's Shadow. In it, they talk about science, skepticism and, towards the end of the program, how this all relates to an understanding of magic (you can listen to the episode here). Talk about coincidence! Here, my recent debates with scientific atheists crash head on with an on-going discussion in the AODA online forum about definitions of magic. Enjoy.]
deò,
Just listened to the latest deò's Shadow episode and in particular your essay on magic, and found it fascinating! I've gotten myself into quite a few... "heated discussions" with scientific atheists lately, and because of this I've been exploring more deeply exactly where the materialist worldview conflicts with my own perspective, which has always been shaped both by a sense of the spiritual and by a highly aesthetic sense. What I keep coming back to is this distinction between science as a method, and science as an ideology or philosophical system. The point made about quantum mechanics by the physicist earlier in the show is something that applies to almost all aspects of science on a most basic level: even the most thorough and reliable scientific theories are merely refined ways of predicting causes and their related effects, i.e. ways of describing reality and, more specifically, material, physical, measurable reality. (You made this point in your essay on magic, as well.)
We get into trouble when we start assuming, firstly, that an expertise in a particular scientific field inherently translates into an expertise in all other fields and areas of knowledge. This is why people like Richard Dawkins drive me crazy! Most scientists would not assume that being knowledgeable in evolutionary biology qualifies you to talk authoritatively about, say, spectroscopy or electron paramagnetic resonance, and yet for some reason many of them assume that such a knowledge does qualify one to speak authoritatively on cultural or religious movements and phenomena, with which they usually have only a passing and shallow familiarity. But I'm getting off track. My point is that there are certainly different kinds of "knowledge," and the study of material cause-and-effect can often miss the mark when applied to social and cultural phenomena. We also run into trouble when, as that physicist earlier in the show mentioned, we begin to speculate about the various metaphysics that might explain the equations and scientific laws without realizing that this is what we're doing. At this point, we can confuse the difference between those theories and descriptions of reality that science brings to light, with the philosophical extrapolations we make based on those findings, and that's when science goes from being a method to being an ideology. Science as an ideology is the belief that the scientific method of understanding reality (i.e. the material, measurable, verifiable approach to reality) is the best and perhaps the only way to gain any useful or relevant knowledge about the world and about ourselves.
But even without resorting to the more obvious exception of spiritual beliefs, we already see that science isn't always the best way to approach cultural or emergent social phenomena. For me, another hugely important exception to a scientific ideology is art and aesthetics. We do not need to believe in any nonmaterial realm whatsoever--we can be complete materialist atheists, in fact--and still see that a work of art has certain experiential qualities that cannot be measured, quantified or (and this is key) repeated in a controlled setting so as to verify their reality empirically. My experience of a painting or piece of music, for example, will be uniquely my own and different from that of my friend's, even when my friend and I can agree about certain basic aspects of that experience. Furthermore, every time we approach a given painting will be a new experience itself, different from our previous experiences (e.g. each new approach will be in a different time, perhaps in a different place, and we will have changed and grown in the meantime). There is simply no way to guarantee that each person's aesthetic experience will be the same as another's or consistent throughout time without imposing a certain control or reductionist approach to the work of art that actually robs it of that very aesthetic nature we were hoping to pin down. And yet I think we can agree that engaging a work of art is a meaningful and even an informative experience, one that can highlight ideas or understandings about the world that are very different from the kind of knowledge gained through the scientific method, but which are still useful and relevant for us as human beings.
What does all of this have to do with magic? For me, I have always found it most useful to approach an understanding of magic beginning from a perspective on aesthetics. I may be biased, of course, since I first was drawn to magic and personal ritual as an extension of creative activity into a more spiritual context--but I still think that this approach can provide a useful alternative to trying to argue about magic using science's own language. The language of scientific method is, after all, not the only language available, and not always the best or most practical! For myself, I like to think of magic as "turning the wheels of coincidence." I'm rather fond of this definition because for me it connects back to the idea that magic is not "supernatural" but ultimately natural, a manifestation or emergent phenomenon of all the myriad forces and energies working and bumping into one another, but one that also requires the freedom of chance, uncertainty and creative choice. Even the strictest determinists can't seem to get away from the assumption that we human beings do have creative choice and that the actions we choose to pursue can affect the world, and they act on this assumption even when speaking officially against it (after all, why would the determinists bother to write their books trying to convince the rest of us of the truth of determinism, if they didn't think such an act of intention would make a difference? Silly determinists.) The idea of coincidence, while not rejecting anything that science has to offer, belies the assumption that the best way we can gain knowledge about the world is by subjecting it to controlled conditions within which we can measure it. Instead, it suggests that we can also understand the world, first by paying attention to how things occur as they occur naturally (i.e. attending to and taking seriously our own experiences of the world just as they're happening), and then by participating in and shaping these goings-on in a meaningful way.
This brings me to the inherent relationship between magic and the act of meaning-making. Creating or imagining meaning is a way of participating in the "goings-on" by bringing order and significance to what can be an overwhelmingly complicated world, and it's an activity that we, as self-aware creatures, engage in almost automatically on a daily basis. It is also a fundamental aspect of aesthetics. When creating works of art, the artist utilizes media that are, in themselves, perfectly mundane and "natural." But by attending to the unique potential for communication and expression inherent within a given medium, the artist can creatively shape that material into a work that opens the door to infinite new experiences that are ever-evolving and ever-revealing or -inspiring in their meaning. I think magic does precisely the same thing: it is really a kind of aesthetic activity, a work (or working) of art, which brings seemingly disparate, non-utilitarian or coincidental actions, materials and events together in ways that inspire, engage, enlighten, enchant, and/or fulfill a need for connection or meaningfulness, in line with a particular intention.
Whereas the artist's medium might be paint and canvas, stone or clay, sound, language or even the human body itself, the practitioner of magic works with chance and coincidence themselves as media for meaning-making. Ritual activity, the symbolism and correspondences of mythology, folklore, and psychological archetypes, and even works of art like music, dance and poetry then become a means by which the mage participates in the shaping of coincidence. They are the tools a mage uses to shape coincidence in the same way that a guitar is the tool a musician uses to shape sound, and the means by which he or she creates song as an experiential work of art--and yet the guitar is obviously not the same thing as the song, and it can be played poorly so as to undermine the creative activity of making music (just like a spell or magical working can be performed in a hokey or ineffectual manner). In some sense, then, when a musician performs, she is not only creating music as an aesthetic work, but also creating a kind of magic. She "turns the wheels of coincidence" by transforming a crowd of strangers into an audience sharing an intimate, communal experience of song: her intention to play manifests as a bunch of random people all gathering in the same place at the same time, and the activity of her playing is the act by which their presence is rendered meaningful and not merely coincidental. The music she performs is an aesthetic experience itself, but the social and cultural experience of the audience moves beyond this experience, though it is shaped and influenced by it in very clear ways. A practitioner of magic does much the same thing: creating, exploring and influencing reality and our experience and understanding of that reality.
I know that much of this might sound like a whole lot of mumbo-jumbo, especially these days when it seems like the creative activity of meaning-making is often dismissed as "making things up" or "seeing connections that aren't there" or aren't real ("not real" according, again, to the scientific standard of what is measurable and repeatable). As you mentioned, those very same cultures that we accuse of being "superstitious" were also very often rich, colorful and enchanting. I think perhaps this is because, superstitions aside (what is superstition, after all, but an attempt to overcome ignorance or a lack of knowledge?), such peoples were well practiced in the art of making meaning, of creating significance and depth out of the random flux of the everyday. If we step into the role of self-aware and intentional "makers of meaning," whether through art or magic, or both--if we accept the responsibility of our creative potential and work to deepen and "re-enchant" the world and our experience of it, informed now by science but not over-burdened or constrained by it--if we do this... well, I'm not sure what would happen, honestly. But I'd love to find out!
--Ali
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Liquids Not as Risky as First Feared
This is not a poem, because who reads poems?
Remember when you put the single-serving coffee creamer in my hand, and I said it was small and cold and like your heart? But what did I say first? That it was good.
Remember how you held the ice cube on my arm, and it cried and cried? There is no reason for it--we just do the things we are designed to do. Here's the heat, the cold, the open hand, the fig and the umbrella, the chocolate, the curdled cream. Here is Peter's thimble and the kiss on the knuckle you don't remember.
Write about that.
Remember when you put the single-serving coffee creamer in my hand, and I said it was small and cold and like your heart? But what did I say first? That it was good.
(Remember before we knew the same people and we had nothing to talk about? What did we say? Small, important things. In my dream, corn is very finely and expertly judged, and everything else is zero (zero = not corn). When did you say: zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero? An old man talks about figs. The headlines read: Liquids Not as Risky as First Feared. According to you, our skin is bread, our quirks are corked quarks. I start a song in the dining room and when I come back you're still singing it. I step into the lobby and an old woman looks up, says, "It's raining, I'm eighty years old, I don't have an umbrella, I'm eighty years old, do you have a dollar, I'm eighty years old... it's raining." Shouldn't I give her everything I have? After that, I step into the rain, and laugh and laugh (and maybe I'm not done).Before my hand was empty, and I ignored it at the end of my arm. The cream has weight and texture and shifts a little inside when I move. Back and forth. This is a compliment: your heart is like a little, liquid thing that sweats. It reminds me what hands are for.
Remember the skin on the hot chocolate that cooled and cracked, and the light on it, and how you always intrude on my confusion as if you have a right to it?)
Remember how you held the ice cube on my arm, and it cried and cried? There is no reason for it--we just do the things we are designed to do. Here's the heat, the cold, the open hand, the fig and the umbrella, the chocolate, the curdled cream. Here is Peter's thimble and the kiss on the knuckle you don't remember.
Write about that.
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