The old notes I found have gotten my thoughts pointing back in the direction of those kinds of studies again. This is probably obvious to some of you. While it can be difficult to find reliable, scholarly texts on the matter, I find that I learn something new almost every time I read the few texts out there that are supported by scholarship. And there is always those untapped journal articles out there that are less about meeting sales quotas than they are about serious scholarship.
But I pulled out those old notes in a break between pants-on-fire moments at work and compared to some study notes that I had started developing in 2020 and have largely settled on by 2024. I compared what I had jotted down in or around 1991-93 and am outright amazed as the similarities.
There are minor differences and quibbles I might have argued about had I known more and been more confident back in the day, mostly related to my personal current insistence that cosmologic relationships must have a logical balance to them. Elements were still weighted towards men or women in a given paradigm at the time and I have always embraced more a Yin-Yang balance to my thinking. The notes I have leaned more towards the masculine, but that imbalance (knowing the people involved) was absolutely not a conscious decision on their part. They tried to find a balance, and it is evident in the notes I had made at the time. That, and I wouldn’t be caught dead doing ritual with a patriarchal pagan community at the time — and they did absolutely exist. I walked out on a few conversations with members of such groups, without any ceremony whatsoever. I just stood up and walked out of the room.
Of course, my studies with that group didn’t go nearly as far as I have on my own since then, so I’m not certain that our understandings would continue to converge as you get into the ever more esoteric “stuff” like I’ve been in the habit of doing in my search for fingerposts pointing to the Old Ways (not the modern reconstructions, I’m far more interested in the stuff between the exclamation points that was lost to history than the marks themselves).
So if I go off on indecipherable tangents in my poetry or prose, well… You now know the likely cause for those tangents.
Because, I’m here to tell you… that subject matter is on my brain once again. For better or worse.
9 responses to “For better or worse”
The love of learning. I’m sure that more will be revealed the deeper you dig.
There’s always something more to learn or better comprehend.
We never stop learning, as long as we embrace the fact that there’s always something more to learn. Learning is growing. Best of luck with yours. 🙂
Thanks. Now if only I’d start remembering 😂
🤔🤔🤔😂😂😂
I enjoy tangents and and digressions. Looking forward to seeing where this goes.
It’s been going on forever, it seems. Which is okay by me.
I find it interesting that there were patriarchal groups. Not surprising, but interesting. I think I (probably naively) would tend to see Earth worship as female, but there’s always gotta be those guys who need power.
Not all pagan groups are (or, at least, were) earth- and nature-centric. Some practiced ceremonial magick, more inspired by the secret societies of the occult than by attempted reconstructions of what little is known about nature-based spiritual organization. And early Heathen groups tended to lean more towards patriarchal thinking. That stance seems to have softened significantly, or I am just encountering more varied thinking that I did back then — the number of overall “pagan” groups has increased significantly in variety since then, all adopting their own takes on what their beliefs mean and how they should be practiced.
The ceremonial practitioners were often seen as peers in the 80s more for their investment in the concept of magic than in matriarchal pathways towards spiritual practice. It was a fraught relationship that often lead to internal and philosophical conflicts at the time. I’m under the impression that these may have gotten more inclusive and balanced than they were “in the day” (or possibly have gone more underground, realizing the lack of similarities).
I have largely eschewed the community as a whole in the past 30 years, so I can’t say how true any of this is with any kind of authority nowadays; it’s just my impressions.