Paganism Saved My Life.
No nuclear bomb will ever destroy nature’s womb
I have a lot I can thank my Christian upbringing for. Literacy, for one. We read theology over the dinner table with dense, philosophical discussion. Then I’d read before bed, and when I was being a good Christian, I’d read the Bible first thing in the morning.1
I can also thank Christianity for introducing me to spirituality. For teaching me the act of prayer. The awareness of soul. The practice of feeling deeply, both inside myself and outwardly into the sky. The silence of listening to deep, embedded wisdom that does not speak in words, especially when surrounded by nature.
It was Christianity that first taught me about forgiveness and grace. The act of radical love. Loving those who have hurt us and are not sorry about it. Loving a world you have decided not to participate in. Loving people you don’t know and have never met.
But as with all living things, the shell that we’re born into is not enough to sustain us into adulthood. There is always the test in the hero’s journey, when she has to push past everything that has been given to her, and follow the directions of the flames inside.
Paganism is a scary word to the type of Christianity that I was born into.2 I remember the uncomfortable dichotomy I would feel in a cage of beautiful stained glass windows, surrounding an image of something that was not holy to me–the execution of Jesus. Certainly, I felt incredible sympathy for him. No one should have to go through that medieval agony, and it’s understandable that he and his followers would need to make sense of that trauma. Call it a sacrifice. Use words like atonement, everlasting life, the “sins” of the world. I don’t begrudge anyone this philosophy, especially if it gives their lives meaning and purpose.
But it didn’t speak to my heart. I’m not a sinner. No one is a sinner. We’re humans, doing our best, however flawed and growing. There is comfort in death, but it’s not a parallel universe where we are in a perfect, peaceful stasis with the bodies we inhabited before death.
When I looked at those stained glass windows, I did feel an inclination to holiness. But it represented something too simple and angular, too bleached, too flat. My holiness called me to Sailor Moon and the Legend of Zelda, to secret magic that caused the church to gasp and call it evil. Power that came from the self was the sin of pride, but if it was a woman cultivating her own power, it was witchcraft and Satanic. If we didn’t get burned, we’d at least get silenced, slut-shamed, belittled, doubted, or gaslit. This goes beyond religion. Just look at the news or social media. (Or don’t.)
I don’t ignore my inner power, and Paganism doesn’t ask me to. I don’t submit to the idea of an omnipotent being whose absence and silence gets filled in with words from malicious patriarchs3 who want to cultivate meek, obedient, shameful followers.
I have power. Nature has power. The trees, the wind, the moon, the ancient rhythms. That’s where my heart was as a child. I felt the power and magic and ancient wisdom of the world. I felt the mistakes, the learning, the evolution. The messiness. The work.
And I don’t begrudge those who feel power and magic elsewhere, or who use different words to describe it (inspiration, excitement, catharsis, motivation). Though I’m often annoyed at the misunderstandings of paganism, wicca, and generally earth-based religions. The “magic doesn’t work” crowd. Dude. It’s symbolic ritual, like communion or baptism or trust falls at a work retreat. No one is above the laws of nature, and every community has a pocket of paranoid, isolated, lore-nerds. They explain every event using the lore, they predict the future using the lore, and they substitute all reliable sources and personal growth with lore. Sure, there are witches out there who create love-potions and cast specific spells for specific outcomes. There are also polar ice swimmers who think they’re strengthening their immune systems. There are bible-thumpers who think that earthquakes are God’s response to homosexuality. There are people who listen to Joe Rogan.
Magic exists as much as God or money or gender. We all design the abstract based on the fires within us. Beyond science, it really doesn’t matter how we like to decorate the mysteries of life, as long as it keeps us in harmony with ourselves and each other.
In my own personal lore, everything begins and ends with trees. When I’m separated from them, I begin to wither. When I’m surrounded by them, I tap into their sub-bass frequencies. My veins resonate with their breath. I look up into the branches and see the same sacred geometry that exists in my synapses, which we recreate in machine learning.
The trees go through seasonal changes. Their leaves die in the winter and become the dirt that replenishes the whole of the tree. That’s how I understand death. My body will end, but it will not be the end of everything, including what is currently inside me. The image of floating in the oblivion of space terrified me when I left Christianity. But the regeneration of plants, leaves, and soil comforts me. We don’t get to know everything. We can glean our flavor of comfort in the inevitable state changes that will shatter our bodies and redistribute the heat and physics within us.
Paganism also comforts me to know that while domination exists in nature, so does harmony, collaboration, and creation. So does the everlasting, immutable womb. No nuclear bomb will ever destroy nature’s womb. As long as there is entropy and chaos, there will be pockets of gravity and surface tension to hold the careening heat and silently demand: Slow down. Remember. Plan.
I know that when I am in the trees, all of the women who came before me are with me. I feel our hearts telepathically touch. The magic beats in my bones, and when I leave the forest, I take that magic with me into the rest of society. Which is messy, and ever-changing, and in need of my little finger prints.
I see a spiderweb in an abandoned corner in my room. A web that connects forgotten space with sacred geometry. A web that I initially mistake for dust, but is actually an intentional, artisan habitat made of proteinaceous silk. I remind myself: We are cells and physics. We are wave and particle. We are everywhere.
This didn’t last very long. No teenager, no matter how nerdy or driven, can transition from the unconscious to the living with a “Thou shall” at 6 AM in weak lamplight. I’d usually fall back asleep, but not before masturbating to stay awake, followed by shame-fueled prayer. This gave me some interesting kinks later on in my adult life that I still enjoy. Who’s laughing now, King James?
Not all Christianity, though. One of my first pagan friends told me that it was a smooth transition from mystic Catholicism, which are also scary words to conservative Protestants. They’re really into fear. But you know what? It keeps them off of cocaine, so, little victories.
#notallreverends. In all my life, I’ve known scores of wonderful reverends who truly want to help people, comfort people, and build supportive communities. But we can’t ignore the Brian Houstons and Mark Driscolls and Bill Gothards, and the harm that is baked into fundamental principles of American Christianity. The truly holy religious leaders are working to address these harms, heal the church, and rebuild American religious institutions.