Diana Rajchel » rants

Eclectic: Use what works, not whatever the hell you want

di — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 14:30:13 +0000

I don’t see a lot of people use the term “eclectic” to describe their Wiccan spiritual practices anymore. I think this is because of the bad rap eclecticism got in the 90s, when hordes of new practitioners – me included – wandered into the neopagan movement and picked up the term to describe ourselves. I think most of us did this because “eclectic” seemed like the best way to handle our fears of commitment. As those around me became “serious” or dropped out in favor of another spirituality or absence thereof, the use of the term “eclectic” faded. Most of those individuals I knew who identified as eclectic back-when now uphold specific traditions or styles of magic. Teaching covens I encountered did seem to push this approach: pick a tradition. Stick with it. Be serious if you’re going to be taken seriously.

I think that this insistence on “getting serious” did serve a greater purpose. I encountered fellows in eclecticism whose approach I liked, and others with a perspective that upset me. It seemed there were two schools of thoughts on eclecticism:

School 1: Use what works.

School 2: Do whatever the hell you want, and call it spirituality.

Use what works

The first approach (mine, for full disclosure) assumes a certain set of rules to magic and spirituality. Those rules have a certain flexibility, and can be broken on rare occasions for one very right reason not within our power to determine, but for the most part if we want our ritual or energy work to have any results, we must for the most part adhere to those rules. The divine is infinite, but within magic and life we’re given the laws of physics so most of the time we don’t just go flying off the earth. Different spiritual systems all manage these rules in different ways, and over the years I’ve come to distinguish what aspects of a spiritual system are spiritual, and what aspects of a spiritual system are humans trying to impose human and frequently petty agendas. A good spiritual system opens and frees, protects those unable to protect themselves and releases from judgment the things where some people might be offended but absolutely no one gets hurt.¹

I acknowledge that this means at some point I must discuss what I consider those rules of magic to be.

This means that if I use prayer beads, or adopt elements of Buddhism into my ritual work, that’s fine – as long as it works. It can’t just be that I like it. Whatever I work in must actually have some impact on my practice, some result in my spellwork or assist me in a visualization. If I try it and it fails, as a committed eclectic I must set it aside – because it does not work.

Yes, I have tried things and they have failed. I’ll flip through my old BOS notes – I’ve been spelunking old files rather a lot lately – and I’ve turned up some incidents of major fail, especially during my Saturn return. This is not to be blamed upon Saturn, but upon the blindness that comes from being desperate and in the middle of a Saturn return. I think the core lesson of that time for me is that all my love lessons in this life are karmic, and while I can use magic for short-term gratification, I personally don’t get to monkey with love in any other way because I’ve got some karmic pre-sets.

Do whatever the hell you want and call it spirituality

I do think there are lines to draw here – for example, if your “spirituality” requires something from someone besides yourself and your divinity, it’s generally a good sign that a)it’s not spiritual and b)you’re playing God. Yes, there is a whole woven ball of consent and ethics that provide fine distinctions but when you strip it away if you need a second or third person to cotton or conform to it, FAIL. I also believe that “Thou art God” is not intended to be interpreted as “Thou gets to PLAY God with the others who haven’t figured out that they’re divine too!”²

Rather than analyze and define, I’m just going to give a list of things I’ve encountered that bug me:

“Oh, I just make up my own gods.”

Gods and archetypes reveal themselves. A deity-level thoughtform requires energy from thousands, if not millions of minds. This is very different from creating a servitor.

“I know that the pantheons don’t really fit together, but I like them.”

If you’re Wiccan and you’re invoking deities, you’re doing so on the supposition you’re dealing with real beings – and that “mythology” is like meeting someone you’ve heard about who is legen….dary. To mix it all up takes the attitude that you are handling fictions, and supposing all sorts of things that are convenient for you to believe. The gods may not be telepathic, they don’t all like each other and sometimes you’re just being rude. I do mix, on occasion – and when I do, I research the parties and try to set up some pre-ritual where they can share a coffee and get to know each other. Mostly, I don’t mix – I just work with the Hellenic divinities, or with the cultures that bumped into each other that formed the basis of Classical mythology.

“I chose Wicca because it supports my alternative lifestyle.”

Yes and no. Pagans are turning out to hold some universal values, but don’t assume that just because you’re polyamorous that the Wiccan next to you in circle is, too. Don’t assume that your furry thing is great conversation over cakes and ale. Don’t assume because you’re straight that your entire coven shares your heteronormative views. Be who you are, but realize that while the gods may or may not be accepting about your modern choices, the individuals standing in circle with you have evolution to do, and have agreed to share that spiritual perspective – to explore sexuality or other aspects of your being, you are obligated to obtain consent first, and there’s a good chance if that troubles you that you yourself still have some evolving to do.

“I just want it to be like the old times.”

This is popular among Renn Fest fans, science fiction conventioneers and other people who get off on harking back to some non-existent good old days. This is bullshit. No matter how torn up the world is, no matter what’s wrong, no matter how much the earth suffers – Right now is the best the world has ever been. No matter when right now is. With progress comes problems, with problems comes progress. I for one like the right to vote, flushing toilets and contraception. I do not think giving up these modern devices brings me closer to Eros.

Feminist Rant section: so what, are we back to “she tempted me?” and women who consciously hurt other women

di — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:30:42 +0000

In case you might have missed it, or don’t follow my other blogs, I am a feminist. I have identified as such since the age of 4, when Sean J. told me boys were better than girls and rather than punching him in the nose, I simply said “Well I’m clearly better than YOU!” and walked away. Such rejection prompted little hearts over Sean’s head, and he somehow managed to get his mother to transfer him into my elementary school classes despite the school’s repeated efforts to keep us separated because the constant arguments interfered especially with my own education. Sadly, Sean’s parents had money and influence mine did not, and thus my early childhood learning disability was a boy named Sean. This was especially true because, since I was not just a girl but a fat Polish girl whose Dad taught for the “trashy” school system, I was automatically to blame for all outbursts Sean caused regardless of how the situation actually conspired. Northwest Indiana, progressive if you’re part of the Taliban.

When at last the family moved somewhere – away from me, which was what was important – my cognitive development grew by astonishing leaps and bounds. Amazing how that worked.

While not conscious, this experience with Sean created a vector of sorts in my life that has repeated over the years. First, I know that at least where I grew up, not only are women not feminists, but the ones that were teachers were very invested in upholding the ideal of female suppression. My kindergarten teacher even had a rule that girls could not play with the toys with wheels on them. That we are somehow distantly related depresses me no end. I figured out early that women were not on my side, and since my household was dominated by women where I was the youngest – my mother actually referred to a pecking order with no thought to how deeply unhealthy that attitude is – I ended up with the outlook that whenever it counts, I’m on my own.

The other aspect of my exposure to spoiled little Sean J. was that every so often throughout my life I’ve attracted some man with misplaced aggression who wants to find a strong woman and put her in her place. Since most woman passively step aside and demur their ways out of this behavior, and because I’m larger than average, I become a favorite target for this particular brand of crazy. All too often, I’m some suppressive asshole’s Big O. Some of these relationships were, thank the gods, sidereal: boyfriends of roommates and the like. However, post-divorce I wound up in three relationships simultaneously that used suppressive/control techniques and at the time I was too lonely and depressed to care even when I did know what was happening. It led to frequent, bizarrely intense interactions: one man was just manipulating me to increase my guilt, another was using the classic withholding strategy, and the last one was on a mission to tell me what to think. While I’ve cleaned out my life of people who pull this shit – women as often as men these days – I’m aware for some reason lately that gender politics are more important than they’ve ever been, and that the recent rising tide of misogyny is probably going to head straight for me.

And part of that is because, most of the time, I like men and I usually prefer their company to what is offered by women.

I bring up this autobiographical wandering because of the recent Jane Doe Girls Gone Wild case, where she actually said “No, I will not take my top off” to the camera crews, only to have a female friend pull her top down anyway. Despite verbally refusing consent and never signing a form – it’s like she just wanted to dance with her friends! – the incident appeared in a video, and a friend of her husband’s found it on a video six years later. A jury determined that if she was present, anywhere near Joe Francis, and female, she knew what was going to happen and deserved what she got.

I can’t say whether the case was worth the 5 million dollars requested – certainly it did damage in her personal life, and it’s pretty clear first that Francis is one of the top ten douchebags in America, and second that this girl was clearly the target of some godawful female competitive syndrome. Not only are the men complicit in what is no more and no less than a sexual assault, but so is the woman who pulled her top down. No word on whether the woman who engaged in the assault and humiliation of Jane Doe is in any way being held accountable.

The attitude that “she was there, she had it coming” is absolutely reprehensible. How would the jury respond if it was someone’s son who had his shorts pulled down in front of a camera? Sure, the incident might seem momentarily funny – until six years later he finds out a buddy of his has a video of it, sold for $10 a pop on late night cable, and it is one of the more popular masturbation materials on the market.

I realize attitudes take the longest to change- certainly men and women have tilted at my attitudes about right and wrong to no avail, and this sense of entitlement to someone else’s body, while deplorable, is clearly sunk in pretty deep. Despite Joe Francis’s own arrogance being sufficient to keep him in jail for extra time, the bastard still walks free and spreads his disease among the vulnerable. And yes, often the girls in the videos are complicit in what happens. But in this case, the girl clearly understood what was going on, made her desires clear – and was ignored. Both Joe Francis and her companion exploited her body, against her clearly expressed wishes. So why are neither of them facing charges, and why is the jury blaming the victim for, essentially, going out in public while female?

This is unacceptable. I want to know what the jury was told, and I want to see more women holding each other accountable for female power politics. Joe Francis is to blame for publishing this girl without her permission and in fact in the face of her denied permission he is even more solidly to blame. But the girl who pulled her top down needs to be charged with criminal sexual assualt, now. Female competitive syndrome is what is allowing misogyny to build up again so strongly in the United States, and I for one do not fancy yet another backslide in my basic right to exist and make my own decisions about my life and my body. This crappy attitude affects all women – when you decide to “get back” at a woman for being prettier/smarter/bitchier, you do ultimately end up hurting several someones you don’t know who never did a damn thing to you.

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