Month: December 2021

Since contemporary paganism lacks a singular theology, every pagan must develop their own account of gods, spirits, and other supernatural beings. A detailed ontology might enumerate hierarchies of entities and their domains, but any ontology must be grounded in a coherent metaphysical explanation of such beings. For the purposes of a general account, one can ignore the vagaries of category and hierarchy and focus only the principles that make supernatural beings possible. The term “Powers” used here will represent an inclusive set of gods, totem spirits, demons, fairies, and other unseen entities that attract veneration, supplication, or appeasement.

While “Powers” must be defined over a wide set, all members of that set share the characteristic of sacredness. Whether benevolent, malignant, or neutral, Powers belong to the non-ordinary space and time of the sacred. One does not experience Powers as one does fellow humans, animals, or plants, so a metaphysics of Powers is needed. A metaphysics of Powers does not need to prove that such entities exist per se, but it does need to address how their existence is possible and how one would gain knowledge about them.

Without some argument in favor of their existence, developing a metaphysics of Powers lacks a immediate significance. To motivate a general account, one needs only a weak existence claim such as existing as phenomena. Whether or not Powers exist as independent entities, their associated traditions and communities demonstrate that they are experienced. If one can grant that subjective experience includes entities described here as Powers, one should also grant that a metaphysical account of Powers must be possible to set boundaries for existence claims.

Assuming that Powers exist as experiences allows one to derive a few characteristics. Powers resemble thoughts, beliefs, fantasies, and other “mental” constructs in that they are experienced as immaterial substance confined to the cognitive landscape. While conventional idioms would describe such apparitions as existing “in the head,” immaterial substance lacks extension in space or time. By definition, material substance is extended in space and time and available to sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. Immaterial substance contrasts as not extended in space and time and unavailable to the coarse senses. Strictly speaking, Powers have no location and take up no space.

If Powers have no location, one must also infer that the potential to experience Powers is not bounded by the individual body, brain, or mind. There is no reason to think that one person’s experience of a Power is necessarily experience of a different Power, as if each subject manifests a Power anew in each experience. If two subjects would agree that the objects of their separate divine experiences are the same, one can infer that they experience the same Power, much as one might say two people share an idea.
As the shared perspective of a power grows and changes, the power can be said to develop accordingly, containing the multitudes of its past and present. The collective creation of Powers distinguishes them from other immaterial objects. When immaterial objects find themselves available to an engaged collective that attaches significance to them, they become Powers in an apotheosis of ideas.

Taking these characteristics together, Powers represent the individual’s encounter with collective ideas. They are real insofar as they are experienced as real, insofar as ideas are real. Powers serve to remind the individual that they are also members of a collective, that they stand in the shadow of something greater, that we are waves in the ocean. The Powers reminds us that we are water.

As capitalism orders the world around its economic rhythm, holidays become pulled into the five day work week. Workers taking off at the beginning or end of a week causes less disruption than a midweek holiday, and the most sacred holidays demand observance even when they fall on a weekend. To address these issues, contemporary governments normalize observing a holiday at the end or beginning of a week rather than on its appointed day.

To put this practice in perspective, one should consider that the single day of release offered for most holidays represents a diminished standard from agrarian societies where major festivals could last multiple days. The Catholic Church maintains seasonal periods that culminate in the supreme feast day, but the capitalist engine thrives on continued motion. Secular society then strangled holidays down from a week to a single day and maintains control over the timing of celebrations.

Neopagans tend to celebrate the solar cycle, the ever-turning wheel of year. Solar festivals are unsurprisingly common among agrarian cultures that must plan according to the seasons. At the appointed time one venerates the gods whose powers are needed for the next phase of the cycle. The times are appointed by the Earth and Sun, and calendars are made to follow them.

In ceremonial magic time often serves as one component of ritual. The working must begin, culminate, or end at the proper time, during the correct phase of the moon or position of the sun. Like most ritual components, time imposes discipline and sacrifice that call the magician’s focus to the ritual and its intentions. It requires the magician to be mindful of celestial movements as well as their own movements on the terrestrial plane. The magician must bring themselves into alignment with time, the Earth, the Sun, the Moon to propel their intention into being with the force of those movements.

The habit of shifting observances draws the magician out of alignment. Instead, one lets the celestial sphere runs its course and work only within the terrestrial plane. One sets aside the sacrifice and discipline required to align with time, and one thereby sets aside the potential to utilize that power. When one works only within the regulated structures of capitalism and secular society, one loses the grace of the sacred.

Capitalism thrives on alienation. The worker becomes alienated from their fellows, their community, and their labor. In driving the calendar capitalism also alienates us from the sacred, from the opportunities to unite with the rhythm of the world at large. Traditional festivals of colonizer cultures are reduced to regimented observances. The traditions of colonized cultures go unobserved unless they can be molded to the colonizer framework. Reclaiming festivals and leisure time is a revolutionary act, a struggle to bring our communities into harmony with themselves and the world.

Contemporary occultists generally agree that belief is a key component for magic. The magician must believe in the methods, the symbols, and the potential for results. Symbols and other occult metaphors require sincere invocation in order to have the desired effect. Phil Hines, among others, centralized the role of belief in the tradition dubbed “Chaos Magic.” The Chaos approach invites the magician to incorporate any element of recreation, occupation, or popular culture into their magical belief system. If focused belief is the core requirement, one can invoke superheroes through playing video games just as one might invoke an ancient goddess with chanting, candles, and incense.

Unpacking the phenomenology of belief shows that the Chaos Magic account remains incomplete. Reducing operative magick to wielding belief as a tool discounts the subjective feeling associated with a belief sincerely held. Holding a belief entails maintaining a propositional attitude toward a statement of fact. William James argues that volition plays a significant role in adopting belief, but will alone is not a sufficient condition for belief. The belief must also feel plausibly true, and it must resolve a significant concern. According to James, belief formation sits at the intersection of reason and subjectivity. For a belief to be sincerely held, the believer must feel the gravity of the settled matter.

While popular culture may hold deep meaning, the economic structures that produce it strip symbols of gravitas. North Americans born in the late 20th and early 21st century have access to a wide array of superheroes, literary protagonists, and beloved childhood cartoons. Unlike the mythos of Ancient Greece, all of these contemporary figures are owned and controlled by corporate entities. They were created to generate profit, and they appear in multiple iterations and adaptations in order to generate further profit. Sophisticated media corporations engineered increased popularity, ensuring that their intellectual property has a place in hearts and minds to motivate further spending. As North Americans we do not possess the mythos of our popular culture. We are not free to adapt stories to new media, to rearrange events, or to imagine new stories. Our heroes are given to us, but not made ours.

Beneath then surface of popular icons lies a web of deeper significance. The mythic traditions of the world provide themes, tropes, and archetypes that inform the creation of contemporary heroes and villains. Following these symbols back in time creates a connection with concepts fundamental to the human experience. Furthermore, these symbols escape tight intellectual property protection due to their great age. They belong to their people unlike the proprietary celebrities that populate our screens.

Traditions and their symbols must live alongside those who held them dear. Tying ourselves too tightly to the past invites stasis, but without any connection to the past, belief is left unmoored. Nothing essential hangs on images promoted in order to separate an audience from its money. If popular culture and Chaos Magic provides an entry point into the occult, the seeker must eventually grow beyond them.

I grew up in a non-place. My home town does not feature in movies, books, plays, or any other artistic medium. The town does not distinguish itself by industry, tourism, or natural features. Its name marks a highway exit easy to forget. Beyond its residents, the town has made no mark on the wider culture. The one major historical event associated with the location is usually named by the nearest large city because it took place before the town’s founding.

Growing up in a non-place, I learned about a world that always felt distant and inaccessible. Major events in politics, business, or entertainment happened elsewhere, in places I could name before I could locate them on a map. As a small child, I did not understand that my town was in the United States because “the United States” seemed so remote. As an adult I feel a lingering wonder and disdain for these cultural focal points. They are pilgrimage sites that offer a taste of their enhanced reality but require the lion’s share of attention as their price.

In my adolescence I began to see the choice between staying and leaving as existential. Some people escaped and changed their lives. The ones who stayed became part of the obscurity of the place, gradually decaying into the various despairs of poverty. To be in a non-place is to be easily forgotten, a statistical consequence made abstract by uncaring law and policy. My family, my schoolmates, and my community appeared to the world only as part of aggregate poverty.

Once I found my escape, I continued to run. Home remained a spectre, a place I could find myself if I failed and could not recover quickly. The fear of that despair, falling back among the forgotten and abandoned, primed me to prefer desperate risks to the familiarity of home. I moved away, and I stayed away. I moved further away, and when I found myself pulled back once, I swore it would be the last time. On each opportunity I chose to place more distance between myself and my place of origin.

Now that my immediate family is gone and the house dispossessed, I feel both comforted and saddened. There is no longer a refuge for me there, but also no more trap. I am not afraid of needing one if I fail anymore. The town would have been a grave rather than a refuge had I ever needed it. Nevertheless, I have no more reasons to walk streets I know so well. The familiar and the poisonous blend with memory. As I fear being alone, my family’s graves are alone, unvisited by a more distant extended family. The most familiar place holds no belonging for me. I am from no-place, and I belong no-place. Only the body is home.

In Indian philosophy, karma is part of the tradition’s account of causation. The word means “act” or “action” literally, but in the context of causation metaphysics it refers to the continuity between a cause and its effect. An action has consequences, and then nature of those consequences will reflect the nature of the action. Attributes that would describe the consequence indicate the attributes of the cause. One can anticipate the consequences by reflecting on the characteristics of the originating action. Any action is an effect of past causes as well as the cause of future events.

Categorizing “good” and “bad” karma reflects an oversimplification of this continuity between cause and effect. Karma can be described as beneficial or harmful depending on the kinds of effects that might follow. An action performed in anger will have effects that are marked by anger. Bringing about physical health in the future depends on taking actions that contribute to physical health. A wise person focuses on beneficial actions in order to encourage a happy future.

Beneficial and harmful karma do not negate or balance one another. Every action sits in its own stream of causation, and one cause can produce both beneficial and harmful effects. One must work through the effects of harmful karma in order to be free of its continued influence. For karma associated with guilt, one might have to atone. For karma associated with pain, one might have to forgive. The decisions a person makes based on their karma determines whether future results are harmful or beneficial.

When included in an ethical framework, karma defines a dimension of reasoning in line with causation. The normative world of moral “ought” often overlooks the complexities of the causal world. Analyzing a decision karmically requires identifying characteristics the decision inherits from its causes and potential characteristics of likely effects. Karma enables one to identify the limits of their agency in the consequences visited on them by the actions of others, such as generational cycles of abuse. At the same time, one can also identify the when their agency can be effective in transforming the future of their situation.