Rant 156: Neopagan Meander

[Irreverend Hugh, KSC]

Rant 156
Neopagan Meander

California neurobiologist James McGaugh on new findings that the brain can separate parts of one memory for processing in the hippocampus, the anterior cingulated amygdala: "It is the first time we have found this fragmentation in the brain of what we would think of as a single experience." In other words, every one of us is a scatterbrain. Human history makes sense now.
-from the feb. 9th, 2006 QT column in the Chicago Sun-Times

"Have faith your socks are where you left them. Unless the puppy got there first."
-from the Summa Discordia

"Trouble is, we end up with a model of our own ego as a God. That's where Eris can help. She can shake up our GodModel a little. Not an old man - a woman, and a hottie at that. Not staid and serious - a hell-raiser. Not overly concerned that you're having fun - mad that you're taking so few chances. Mix up the GodModel a bit every now and then to make sure that someone other than you is involved."
-from the Summa Discordia

I know you. And you are thinking I can't possibly know YOU, seeing as this is just a collection of electronic words you are reading from anywhere on earth, and all you are to me is some anonymous web reader, probably a little bit too kooky for me to want to really know in real life. But when I say I know you and you protest that I can't know you at all, we are both right. I do KNOW you and I don't. What I mean by this is that I know some of what you will be thinking in response to this collection of basic scrawling packaged into some rant format that you would probably think was more valuable if you had to pay exorbitant amounts for it. And I don't actually know you, as in I have never met you. (Well, some of you anyway. You should be so lucky to hope that we haven't met.) But I won't let that stop me and neither should you. So let's start again with take two, shall we?

I know you. Yes, YOU. I know you. You have this neat cool alternative religion that you call Neopaganism or Wicca or Asatru or Druidism or Mithraism or even that new heathen comet-alien worshipping techno-raver cult that your neighbor has started. I know you are caught up in your neat ideas about these old musty gods and goddesses you have dusted off from the shelves of ancient mythology and now you think yourself special and unique because your version of God, or Gods, or Goddesses, or Socks, is so different from the average person in your society who is still worshipping that guy who got into a mix-up with the authorities in ancient Israel. You know that guy, the one who saves souls and probably redeems them for valuable prizes? Of course you do. You didn't like that sort of religion, so you went looking around for a while and found the latest version of Neopaganism, or the version that made you feel special finally, and you now have either a gaggle of deities with whom you can identify, or you have one favorite god, sort of like an ethereal best friend. (And I wonder about that. Some children made up invisible best friends when they were growing up. I wonder if that is part or whole of the impulse to find gods and to make religions around them. I don't blame any of the gods for that. I blame you, dumb ass.)

Problem is, most of what you know about your chosen God, or gods, or Socks, is really a reflection of yourself and what you would like to see in this existence. The fact that you have opened up the game, so to speak, to more than one god, a good thing actually, doesn't mean you haven't gotten caught up in the old "make-my-ego-bigger-and-grander-by-adopting-deity" trick. (It happens all the time. For a good case study, read the meander of Aleister Crowley, who best exemplified this sort of thing.) I don't know about you, but last time I seriously tried to do that, my gods took a vacation and let Eris to the dirty work of slapping that silly snotty notion right out of my heart. Of course, I didn't like that. It was pretty painful at the time, despite the fact that it was also pretty funny. I don't like that because normally I don't like it when gods go poking about in my business. Hell, I don't mess with theirs. But then I should have expected that Eris gives no damn about any bullshit that I may cherish. Now if you have trouble thinking about these gods as being real, just consider what I have said to be the working metaphor for the moment. If I found out that any of you took my words literally in this regard, I would duly make sure you never made that mistake again. You may be just a screen name on the web, but we Discordians have our ways, especially with all the Witches that have lately joined the "Movement."

I am not here to attack your faith in your gods. I am not here to breathe down your proverbial necks as Neopagans. I am here to simply poke you a bit. You know the routine...the whisper at your ear that tried to find a home in your awareness that says "Hey. Pssst. Over here! Look around you. You're still a slave. Wake up!" I don't want you to feel guilty over wasting your time chasing after your ego-figments (that you have confused with gods). I want you to snap out of it now while you can, before the memory holes come to swallow you hole. (And memory holes, unlike Claw Shrimp, do not spit their quarry back up.) The greatest transdimensional soul-sucker is your own bullshit. Read that again. Think about it.

Some of you have gotten into the happy-happy-joy-joy of Neopaganism. I don't knock anyone's quest for happiness, or...hell, even crass entertainment. (You should know I too like crass entertainment as evidenced by my newfound addiction to television crime/cop dramas.) But in all of that "all-is-good" mentality, has anything really changed in the world, or even in your own life for the better? Has it? Honestly think about that. Because if you're saying that all is good and that the goddess loves you and that you should harm none or at least not harm those poor suckers who are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and yet you still slam doors in front of old ladies and kick your dog, I question you and your gods. Read that again and again. You may find an occult truth there that is so astoundingly amazing that if you actually realized it, you would see how much of a drooling idiot you have been up till now. And please know that I don't want you to be a drooling idiot, unless you are aware of it and know that you like to be so silly. The problem is (as I have spelled it in my exacting anthropological treatise entitled "To hell with this crap! Let's go bowling!") that some of you are going around drooling all over the place and hopping around like fools all the while thinking of your endeavors as being the most important holiest thing you could be doing, without ever once getting the joke. Remember that Carlos Castaneda character and how he acted in front of that old Don Juan chap? That is you.

Reality? That is Eris, my friends. (I call Her Eris, but reality could "really" be any of those gods you don't like much because they are too scary, chaotic, dark, or feminine for you.) If that scares you, too bad. It could be the funniest thing you have ever heard if you would just sit back and for once smell the roses. Not your idea of how roses should smell. Not your idea of prettiness and all-is-light. But actual roses. You want to find divinity? Look into that mirror when you wake up in the morning, before all your silly notions about who you are and what you should be doing snap you into place in the vapid throes of ego. Do you even really know who that sucker is staring back out at you? If you are so quick to rush to judgment or have a ready made answer, then you are a slave to your own soul-sucking bullshit. A mere subject of three-headed mind pollution. A sliver of life that has lost its innate sense of wonder. True wonder that comes from realizing that the universe is much more vaster than you could ever hope to know, and that this awareness is, frankly, the way to be free, or at least to start living as if you are free. (I have to put the last bit in there for you determinists out there who think you have it all figured out.)

It doesn't matter to me whether you are a Wiccan, a Druid, or some other sort of Pagan. (Or even if you call yourself a fellow Discordian.) What matters is that you know what to do with all of the bullshit you have. I am not saying reject it. That would be stupid. You can't get rid of it. But you can see through it. You can use it to make beautiful things. (I am not saying "beautiful" as in some social standard. I mean "beautiful" as in what attracts you and leads you into happiness. This is the art of Eristhetics, actually. And if you want to learn more about that, you can report to our offices and receive your initiations now, while supplies last.) But I meander now because you have a logical hole in my argument: You can say that your own bullshit makes you happy and that I should respect that. However, remember back there a few paragraphs up? If your life is actually getting better, then chances are you aren't a slave to your own BS and perhaps you have no need to extend your ego out into those favorite images of any of the gods. If your life is not getting any better and it's not even satisfying you...if you find yourself constantly blaming everything else but yourself and you have not lifted even the slightest finger, then you are full of it. Perhaps Eris or one of us can help you in this respect, but remember that we are not therapists...well, for some of us, not yet.

Imaginary friends or gods help you none, unless it is part of some elaborate Vajrayana Conspiracy, in which case keep going because those nutters have a method to the madness that even works on crusty old mountain monks. And some of those imaginary things are found out to be...SURPRISE!...not so imaginary. But that is another joke that you would be an idiot to forego realizing.

In all of your worshipping, rituals, and what-not, remember this: How much is truly making a connection with what the hell is really going on? And how much is simply to pack yourself into a fortress of BS in which you can still impute that the universe really revolves around you? The reason why I like Eris is because She is a god that constantly changes colors and shapes and forms so I can never confuse Her for my own image of Her. Reality works this way. Not because it necessarily looks to break us out of our stupidity (evolution will take care of that mutation, eventually...hopefully), but because it is just that way. So all of your labels and conventions are simply a way to think about existence and whatever or whoever the hell is going on. All of your images about the deities are simply the ones you have chosen. If you sit there and think that one or more of the gods have chosen or called you to them, you are just being silly. Ego makes you think that such things could happen, no matter how much you try to dress it up in humility. Ever heard of metaphor and symbol? Try not to confuse them for existence, which is a meander. Any meaning you make of it, or claim to derive from it, is your own artistry.

So sorry to all you goddess or god worshippers, no matter the name. Here comes the sound of a can of worms being ripped right open.

Sorry to all you druids who think you have been called to protect the Earth (a pernicious idea that stems more from Morgan Llywellyn novels than from any truth). You want to protect the Earth? You could do far more than simply "reviving" some supposedly ancient practices while dancing around bonfires. (Hell, I like drinking and dancing around bonfires too. But I don't claim any significance for it. The old Celts, by the way, saw no need to keep the Druids around, so why should you? Some Welsh went ahead and revived Druids too, but these are glorified poets. And I suspect tourism was a motive behind that con-job.) Druids. Protecting the Earth? Sort of like the Christian Fundamentalists protecting the faith? I find it hard to believe that any of you so-called Druids out there could even be so, since you aren't living in Gaul or old Ireland or ancient what-have-you. How would you know what they hell they did or thought, especially with regards to the Earth? I rarely see any of you speaking in Gaulish or some Celtic language they would have spoken. You think thoughts can be translated? Don't count on it. Even insights are culture bound. (Sort of like the insights that Americans have that delude themselves into thinking they can pick up pieces of foreign cultures and readily understand them.)

Sorry to all you Wiccans who think that your version of Mystery(tm) is better than anyone else's (especially those of you Wiccans who think your version is better than the Christians'). Perhaps many of you more recent Wiccans should learn to respect that fact that if you are divine, then that means those annoying Christians-you-dislike are also divine. Even that waitress who thinks your pentacle is Satanic is a divine being. Even that drunken Asatruar who wakes you up in the middle of the night with his blot next door is a divine being. It might be better for you to actually find the Wicca that you can't buy at your local chain bookstore, before you go off calling yourself Wiccan. I know this is hard for you to accept in this point-and-click era, but book reading does not make you a member of a religion. And since I have been involved with this form of Paganism for years now, I can spot you silly gits from a mile away. Not saying you can't join in the spectacle. Just saying you may want to realize that religion is more than reading and wishful thinking. If it is not more than this, then the Atheists are right.

Sorry to all you Pagan Fundies who think yourselves a bunch of more aware, more tolerant, more connected people. I have personally witnessed how some of you shit on one another with impunity because you believe yourselves to be so much more freer and less-bound than the majority of society. So how you think you are all somehow exempt from that stupid human failing is beyond me. You may want to think about what hypocrites you are to talk about how evil and polluting society is when you are the ones driving your lovely tree-choking cars and SUVs out to all those silly festivals designed to make you feel at one with the Earth. I stay away from Pagan festivals (unless I go with other Discordians) because if I want to involve myself in melodrama, I can hang out with wannabe actors. One with Earth? Frankly, most of you would wet your pants if you attained any sort of oneness with the Earth. She'd slap you like the naughty child you have been and then laugh at your silly pretensions. (Too bad the Earth won't give a rat's ass about you when you poison yourself for your comforts. Evolution is the oldest game in town and we humans are but a side experiment gone awry if we can't figure out how to be human anymore. )

Sorry to all of you who like to point your fingers at "those-others" for the mess the world is in. This game of divinity is not the "my-god/s-is/are-better" routine that you have been making it out to be. Don't lie to me. No matter how often you claim that all gods and goddesses are worthy and how all paths are valid, I know that you just say that by rote. How do I know this? I can see it in the way you live, or what you say. What it all boils down to is that you have fallen for the vile illusion that makes you think that what you are doing or what gods you are into is of supreme importance. This still lets you think that the world revolves around you.

Eris, or whomever you blame reality on, doesn't revolve around you. If She did, you would be wise to worry and hide somewhere. Sharks and other predators circle their prey too. And you wouldn't want to be caught on THAT thin ice, now would you? Because if you fall below, we shall be waiting to make you the next court jester in our elaborate Erisian mystery cult. A cult that offers satisfaction guaranteed, but with our fingers crossed behind our backs. (But at least we tell you our fingers are crossed, unlike the other spiritual contenders.) A religion which finally cuts through the crap and says "Sorry suckers! The secret of the universe is out: There is no secret."

If you can get yourself to stop wrapping everything around you into some twisted version of yourself, you might just actually learn what any of your gods/nature/universe/Bob/etc. might actually be doing or saying. And don't cry too loudly when you find out. Because Eris doesn't like anyone who does more bitching then Her. Give Her that indulgence. She has been around a bit longer than you, so She might have a valid grievance or two more than you do. I just hope some of you Neopagans can stop using your spirituality as an excuse to exist. You already exist and need no excuse for it, you silly gits!

February 13th, 2006
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC;
of the DSSS/PMM
Conspirator with High Papessa Bella
Agent Provocateur in Hoshiko and DS#3's War Against Hostages
Church of Eris ArchSwinging Bastard
and silly man who convinces white people they can be shamans so he can get a good laugh