Question of the Week: Flags and symbols

Posted on April 5, 2009 by Brendan

Another fun one this week, although it might make a few of you think I’m trying to start my own cult. (Well, I am kinda tired of being poor…)

In his 1957 book “Symbols of Faith”, American theologian Paul Tillich wrote: “Man’s ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate.” From there he described six properties of symbols which distinguish them from mere signs. They are:

1. Symbols point beyond themselves to something else. (Well, so do signs.)

2. Symbols (unlike signs) participate in the reality of that to which they point.

3. Symbols open up levels of reality which are otherwise closed to us.

4. Symbols also open up dimensions and elements of the soul.

5. Symbols cannot be produced intentionally; they grow from the individual or collective unconscious.

6. Symbols cannot be invented: like living beings, they grow and they die.

So my question for this week concerns the power of symbols. Furthermore, as I read Tillich’s discussion here, I was particularly intrigued by his use of national flags as the example which makes his point. In his description of the second property of symbols, he says:

The flag participates in the power and dignity of the nation for which it stands. Therefore, it cannot be replaced except after an historic catastrophe that changes the reality of the nation which it symbolizes…

So I’m also curious to ask about your views on the power of flags as symbols for our most ultimate spiritual ideas, and our most important social commitments. A community, a government, even a nation, not just an individual, asserts its presence with a flag in a political as well as existential sense. The flag also carries the implicit presence of that nation’s history, origin, priorities, laws, political structures, and so on. Thus whenever I travel in Europe, the sight of a Canadian flag in someone’s apartment window, or on another traveler’s backpack, always makes me happy. I find myself glad of the sign that a member of my ‘tribe’, so to speak, is nearby.

more discussion, and some pictures…

Posted in Archive 2007-2009 | 11 Comments

Question of the Week: Hansel and Gretel

Posted on March 29, 2009 by Brendan

And now, a slightly more lighthearted question, after the heavy and vigorously debated themes of the last few Q’s of the Week.

I presume that everyone knows the story of Hansel and Gretel, from the Brothers Grimm? If not, here’s the text itself from Grimm’s Fairy Tales. And here is a few words about Jacob and Wilhelm themselves.

Well, when I was a child the portrayal of the witch in this story used to really frighten me. This was a woman who ate people, after all! And then, a few months ago, when I bought a really beautiful illustrated edition of the Brothers Grimm and began to read them again as an adult, it occurred to me that the story of Little Red Riding Hood was not about the wrongness of disobeying parents or of venturing into strange places alone, or trusting strangers. It was actually about the vice of food-gluttony. So, my question for this week concerns adult themes in children’s storytelling.

In the tale of Hansel and Gretel, everybody is starving. Their parents are so hungry they are contemplating abandoning the children so that they don’t have to share food with them. (That part of the story was excised from the first english-language editions.) The children use flint fragments to make a trail for themselves. But one day, there are no flint scraps left, so they use breadcrumbs (food!) instead. When that trail trail was eaten by birds, the children get lost and they wind up at the doorstep of a house literally made of food – gingerbread and candy – and inhabited by a witch who eats people! Cannibalism is probably the most anti-social of all vices: it refuses to acknowledge the personhood of the other person, and instead sees the other person as that which can gratify the most basic of self-centered needs – the need to eat.

This, of course, is only one example. The story of Sleeping Beauty is really about vanity. Jack and the Beanstalk is about greed. Rumplestiltskin is about deceit and lies. Snow White is about envy. All the major ‘food groups’ on the menu of vice are represented here. One also finds gratuitous violence and graphic sexuality. Think of what the wolf did to the grandmother in the story of Little Red Riding Hood – and of what the woodcutter did to the wolf. Think of what the the spindle of a spinning wheel that ‘pricked’ Sleeping Beauty really is.

Have you a favourite story that you remember from when you were a child? What does it mean to you now?

Posted in Archive 2007-2009 | Tagged | 6 Comments

Would the worship of the Goddess make the world a better place?

Posted on March 23, 2009 by Brendan

Argiope – Donne nel Sacro presents

An Afternoon with Brendan Myers: Civilization and the Goddess

9th May 2009, in Milan, Italy.

Click here for further details

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This week’s “Question…”

Posted on March 22, 2009 by Brendan

…is deferred to next week, because it’s still essay-marking season for me, and I have to give time to my real job today.

Meanwhile, here’s a cartoon from “Sinfest“, which I present in honour of Spring Equinox (even though this cartoon was originally drawn for New Year’s Day).

Posted in Archive 2007-2009 | 1 Comment

Follow-up to “Cultural Inovators”

Posted on March 18, 2009 by Brendan

First of all, my sincere thanks to everyone who joined the conversation and contributed a comment or two. (And a gentle reminder to those posting anonymously: in the future, please include your name.)

I posed a very multifaceted question. But obviously most people felt compelled to respond to just one aspect of it: “what pagan leader would you pay $100 to hear speak?”. Most of you answered “nobody”.

I was thinking of tightening up the question somewhat: “Supposing you had $100 handed to you, right now, and the benefactor said that you had to use the money to attend a public talk by one or more spiritual leaders, whom would you choose?” had I phrased it that way, all issues concerning ability to pay, or the need to spend that money on rent, gas, food, children’s needs, etc., would have been out of the way. We could then have focused on what I was hoping we would focus on, namely, the matter of the qualities of character, or practice, or service, or whatever, that those people possess, which makes them innovators. I thought that such a discussion would helpfully enable us to find other innovators, or future ones, whether they are famous writers, or local individuals who serve their local private or semi-private groups.

But it seems most most people wanted to discuss the matter of economic compensation. And most people, it appears, held the view described by marytek when she said: “The idea of monetary compensation is an anethma to most pagans.” (Read her comment here). It certainly appears to be anathema to those who, replying to the blog post, said that they would not pay anyone any money at all for spiritual services. harmonyfb put it in very stark terms when she (are you a she?) wrote, “I don’t prostitute out my belief system for a dollar”. Another person, writing anonymously, said “No one, my way in the craft forbids charging for training.” Some even went further, denying any significant personal need for a community innovator in the first place.

Well, the amazing thing about people is that they will always surprise you. 🙂 But don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed reading everyone’s comments.

My own views on the matter aside – which, you will notice, I have most cleverly not disclosed (not yet anyway) – may I continue the Question of the week by asking: Why, exactly, is it morally wrong to contribute and/or accept money for spiritual services? Why is it wrong to pay someone for performing a handfasting, a wiccaning, a rite-of-passage, a counselling session, a teaching circle, a public lecture? Do we have a right to expect that people in a position to offer such services, whatever their qualifications or experience, should work selflessly, and therefore for free? Is there in your thinking an inherent contradiction between material services like car maintenance, and immaterial services like spiritual guidance counselling? Or is there another reason?

Or, perhaps it is the case that spiritual services should be compensated much as one compensates a medical doctor, or a car mechanic, as dop4 observed (read his comment here.). After all, your local Elder, and your local friendly neighbourhood internationally famous pagan writer, also has to pay for rent, gas, food, children’s expenses, and so on, just like everyone else does. And as just about all of these writers will tell you, the income they get from book sales and royalties is nowhere near enough to meet their minimum living expenses. Perhaps, as another anonymous comment said, we become “stingy selfish buggers” by refusing to compensate.

But please don’t answer with “My way in the craft forbids it”, since this doesn’t really answer the question: in fact it probably commits the fallacy of appeal to authority.

Posted in Archive 2007-2009 | 22 Comments

Question of the week: Cultural Innovators.

Posted on March 15, 2009 by Brendan

A recent article on Witchvox.com asked, “Where have all the Gardners and Crowleys gone?” (Full article here, and author Juniper’s home page here.) The more general question that the author was asking, it seems to me, was: Where are all the innovators, the trailblazers, the elders? Why do we no longer have people of the intellectual and imaginative calibre of the pagan ‘big names’ of the early to mid 20th century?

Her answer to that question was twofold. For one, she claimed that pagans treat their elders and innovators rather badly; and two, the innovators themselves quickly become jaded as the fruits of their life-long labour goes disrespected or forgotten. A third answer was also implied in this sentence: “Because we buy white-lighter, easy-to-read, fluffy little books when we should be buying the books Chapters and Barnes and Noble refuse to sell.“. Well, as a writer of books that are certainly not fluff and white light, you can imagine this caught my attention right away.

So my question for this week concerns the innovators in our movement, and how we treat them. Is Juniper correct when she says that the community itself, because of a predisposition to exploit and disrespect such people, tends to prevent them from emerging? Or, in your experience is there an emerging culture which recognises, benefits from, and respects such people? Who do you turn to when you need advice, or help, or information about your path, or even just a kind word once in a while? What qualities do they embody which makes you want to turn to those people, and not others?

Are there people today who are doing the kind of trail-blazing, innovative work that people like Gardner and Crowley once did? Another way to put this question, as my friend Susan Hurrell put it, “what living pagan author would you pay $100+ to hear lecture for 2 hours?”* For that matter, what living author of any spiritual tradition would you pay $100 to hear?

I will post my own list in a few days.

*You don’t have to include me on your list. I already know that I’m still a small time writer, and much of what I write about these days is only tangentially related to paganism anyway.

Posted in Archive 2007-2009 | Tagged | 53 Comments

Question of the week: Female Power

Posted on March 8, 2009 by Brendan

Today is International Women’s Day.

So, the question of the week, naturally, is, What (if anything) are you doing for it?

In her often-quoted 1979 essay “Why Women Need the Goddess“, Carol Christ said:


Religious symbol systems focused around the exclusively male images of divinity create the impression that female power can never be fully legitimate or wholly beneficent…

The simplest and most basic meaning of the symbol of Goddess is the acknowledgment of the legitimacy of female power as beneficent and independant power.

My question for this week – and I mean this question with honest curiosity – concerns female power: political, economic, social, personal, spiritual. Is female power just the same as any kind of power, but that it happens to be wielded by women? Is it the case that the whole Goddess movement has a mainly political point, namely, the shifting of power into the hands of women, and the symbol of the Goddess is only a political device intended to achieve that result? Upon reading Carol Christ’s essay, that is the impression that I get, at least in the first few pages. Or, is there something distinct and different about female power? Does power wielded by women do different things, or aim for different purposes? Is it exercised in a distinct kind of way? CC’s essay says that power in a Goddess-centered context is “exercised in harmony with the energies and wills of other beings“. This suggests that female power is more collaborative and cooperative. Is she right? Is there something distinctly “female” about cooperation?

Or, is it really obvious from these questions that I haven’t studied much feminist thought, and that I’m asking entirely the wrong questions about female power?

Posted in Archive 2007-2009 | Tagged | 10 Comments

Question of the week: Religiosity and Social Dysfunction

Posted on March 1, 2009 by Brendan

And now it’s time for a tougher question.

Many religious people of the Abrahamic tradition (which means Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) claim that the belief in God is important because such belief is necessary to produce a healthy, peaceful, just, law-abiding, and even economically prosperous society. It is further claimed that the absence of religious belief will contribute strongly to social dysfunction. This is an idea with deep roots especially in America. For example, Benjamin Franklin stated that “religion will be a powerful regulator of our actions, give us peace and tranquility within our minds, and render us benevolent, useful, and beneficial to others.” The national mythology of America has from the beginning included the idea that America is an “exceptional” society, a “shining city on the hill” which serves as an example to the world of what a Godly, peaceful and prosperous society is like.

Today, organisations like the Discovery Institute work to undermine confidence in Darwinian evolution science, and to promote creationism and intelligent design, precisely because of the hypothesis that overt religiosity is socially beneficial, and that a secular society will degenerate into chaos. Indeed the social benefits of faith are sometimes taken as evidence for the existence of God, when other forms of scientific evidence are unavailable or doubtful. Numerous surveys also show that many people in America believe that religiosity is necessary for peace and prosperity in society.

However, at this time I have been able to find only one professional sociology essay which puts this hypothesis to the test: “Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies” by Gregory Paul, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, 2005. in this essay, the author compares the rate of belief in God to several indicators of social health, such as the rates of murders, youth crime, STD infections, teenage pregnancies, and abortions. What he found was exactly the opposite of what the religious conservatives would expect: he found that the higher the rate of religiosity in a prosperous democratic country, the higher the rate of social dysfunction. Here is a quote:

Although they are by no means utopias, the populations of secular democracies are clearly able to govern themselves and maintain societal cohesion. Indeed, the data examined in this study demonstrates that only the more secular, pro-evolution democracies have, for the first time in history, come closest to acheiving practical “cultures of life” that feature low rates of lethal crime, juvenile-adult mortality, sex related dysfunction, and even abortion. The least theistic secular developed democracies such as Japan, France, and Scandinavia have been most successful in these regards. The non-religious, pro-evolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator. The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience social disaster is therefore refuted.

Read the whole essay here. A similar conclusion was also reached in a book-length treatment by Phil Zukerman, which was discussed in a recent edition of the New York Times.

My question is: Given this statistical correlation between religious belief and social dysfunction, would Pagans be any better than Christians, Jews, or Muslims at delivering a peaceful and healthy society? Even if judged by our own standards? I must admit, I have my doubts.

Continued discussion follows here.

Posted in Archive 2007-2009 | Tagged , | 10 Comments

Question of the week: Selflessness

Posted on February 22, 2009 by Brendan

Many of the most often quoted contemporar pagan moral principles, such as the Wiccan Rede, Crowley’s Law, and the like, are principles of self empowerment and personal freedom. The concept of Will, which appears in both of those aformentioned moral statements, suggests that the pagan point of view on ethics emphasises the needs and purposes of the individual self, first and foremost.

My question for this week concerns the possibility of selfless acts and selfless choices. Is there any space at all in a pagan point of view for an action which is completely oriented to benefit and respect others, with no concern for one’s own interests at all?

One answer might be “no”. Any act or choice intended primarily for the benefit of others, so the argument goes, always has a “return of investment”. it might be a material reward. It might be something immaterial too, like the good will towards oneself which the recipient of one’s beneficence might show. It may even be something internal, like a feeling of pride or pleasure in the thought of one’s good deed, and in the sight of the consequences of one’s actions. Some even claim that to adopt a social ethic, one which puts relationships first and emphasises one’s membership in communities, is still an individual choice.

Another answer might be “yes”. Especially from the time that the pagan movement developed its environmentalist dimension most explicitly, there is a lot of pagan ethical thinking that emphasises an ‘expanding’ or a ‘broadening’ of the self, such that the interests of the singular individual self become incorporated into the interests of a larger ‘global’ or ‘cosmic’ self. One acts with a view not for the pursuit of one’s private interests (in competiton with others), but “with a view to the maintenance of the world”, to quote the Bhagavad Gita. I described just such a position in my first book, “Dangerous Religion”. On this point of view, acts are not exactly “selfless” but the notion of the “self” is radically changed. Furthermore, as the philosopher Charles Taylor observed, the individualist view is actually a social one, since the very notion of individualism, and the signifigance of individual choices, depends greatly upon a shared acknowledgement and shared recognition of the value of individual choices. That shared acknowledgement forms what he calls a ‘horizon of meaning’ which transcends the self.

Well, which is it? Or is there some third possibility between them? What would an example of a fully selfless yet fully pagan value?

This week’s question suggested by my friend V.M., in Switzerland. By the way: I have a list of future questions planned, but feel free to email me with suggestions!

Posted in Archive 2007-2009 | 17 Comments

Question of the week: Sacred Architecture

Posted on February 15, 2009 by Brendan

The philosopher Paul Ricoeur wrote the following about temples, in a collection of essays entitled “Figuring the Sacred”:

What is most remarkable about the phenomenology of the sacred is that it can be described as a manner of inhabiting space and time. Thus we speak of sacred space to indicate the fact that space is not homogeneous but delimited—templum—and oriented around the “midpoint” of the sacred space. Innumerable figures, such as the circle, the square, the cross, the labyrinth, and the mandala, have the same spatialising power with respect to the sacred, thanks to the relations these figures establish between the center and its dimensions, horizons, intersections, and so on. All these phenomena and the related phenomena by which the passage from profane to sacred space is signified—thresholds, gates, bridges, pathways, ladders, ropes, and so on—attest to an inscription of the sacred on a level of experience beneath that of language.

My question today concerns sacred architecture. And before you say we shouldn’t build temples at all, but should worship our gods (or whatever) in our homes, or in fields and natural settings, or wherever you happen to be, think about the needs in the mind that temples can satisfy. We’ve been building temples for thousands of years now. Christian churches and cathedrals are built to meet specific social, political, and psychological needs: they replicate temples described in the Bible, such as the Temple of Solomon, or the New Jerusalem described in the book of Revelation. They are meant to give the seeker a taste of the Kingdom of Heaven. Yet long before Christianity, there were magnificent temples dedicated to numerous gods, goddesses, powers, heroes, and ideas, all over the world.

If you could design and build a temple, what would it look like? What would the landscape around it be like? Would it be designed to resemble the Central Mountain, or the World Tree? Or, would it resemble a cave, a woman’s birth canal? Would it replicate a temple of the ancient world, now in ruins? Is there an existing temple that is a favourite of yours?

Illustration of a Romano-Celtic temple, circa 2nd century C.E.

Posted in Archive 2007-2009 | Tagged | 7 Comments