Symbols, Secrets, and Fidelity

I have been battling a virus since my return from our Thanksgiving vacation to Phoenix and the Grand Canyon. It was a good trip and I was happy to see my sister, brother in law, niece, nephew, grand-nephew and my mum in the desert lowlands. Then it was equally fun to introduce my daughter to the canyon and the high uplands. It always does my spirit good to see mountains and the canyon of the Colorado River itself is unparalleled in sublimity. I hope some day I can afford to stay there for a week or two and really explore, write, perhaps paint, and to get to know more about the native nations who live there and who were so brutally displaced and mistreated by the first European settlers in that country.

I got very little writing done or editing on my manuscript for Wandlore. A respiratory ailment came over me and I felt weak some of the time. Plane travel disagrees with me and I long for the age of the airship. Packed into a couple hundred people in uncomfortable seats and subjected to hellish noise for three hours has predictable effects on my nervous system and I was exhausted coming and going. Then followed a fortnight with the coughing virus and the wonderful world of sputum as the doctors call it.

Tonight, however, I am hail enough to attend Scottish Rite after missing the last three degrees. I discovered only yesterday that I am the principal candidate for the 30th degree, Knight of Kadosh. I take this as a high honor and am very excited for the evening. Before I take all those vows of secrecy, I wanted to talk about it a bit here. I don’t think that the point of the vows of secrecy in Masonry are really to keep things secret. That may sound daft, but hear me out.

Taking vows of secrecy, to not reveal what goes on in a degree and in particular the secret recognition signs and words, is a way to keep the integrity of the organization and also to keep its initiatory rituals exciting for those going through them. If everyone was as familiar with Masonic degrees the way, say, Lutherans are familiar with the order of service on Sundays, it would not have any impact at all. Indeed, that is one of my beefs with organized religion. It appeals to the sort of person who wants things to stay the same, or who wants the familiar message, the old platitudes, and as little interpretation as possible.

Masonry, like most initiatory societies, works differently. One is presented with a surprise, a drama that is new, something the candidate has never before experienced. The vows of secrecy are there not to keep out the riffraff or cover up devil-worship, or be elitist. All such accusations are codswollop. The secrecy protects the future candidate from having his experience spoiled. If you read a really good novel that takes you by surprise, a “mystery novel” as we say, you don’t run out and tell the whole story to your friends, including the ending. You encourage them to read the book for themselves. No book report can possibly be like reading a good book itself. Especially if the book is something like Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, full of history, symbolism, and puzzles. You have to experience such a book in time, unfolding it, savoring it.  It’s like the Grand Canyon.  You have to be there.  That is the reason for the prohibitions against blabbing about the degrees.

But there is another reason too. And that is simply the value to each of us of making and keeping vows. It’s rather like wedding vows. It does you good to curb your tongue or your other passions and keep a promise. Keeping a promise, or fidelity, as they say in Latin, is a virtue and practicing it builds a virtuous character. It isn’t the only virtue, of course, but it is a very important one. It is only through the practice of honesty and fidelity — keeping our word — that we can trust one another or even trust ourselves. Faith in oneself and faith in others is all built upon this ephemeral spiritual quality we call fidelity. And it is upon fidelity that our whole human society is based.

What society can one have if no one can trust others? The Mafia perhaps, but if we are to believe Mario Puzo, even organized crime relies on loyalty and fidelity. It falls apart when people blab secrets or tell lies or renege on agreements. How much moreso a just and peaceful society free of crime and vice? Masonry is structured in such a way that its members are given the opportunity to exercise the virtue of fidelity and to trust their brothers. That aspect of Masonry is very hard to describe to non-masons. It almost seems counter-intuitive. How can taking vows and keeping secrets be a virtue? But it is not the secrets as such that are the value here. They are really quite valueless secrets, and that is the point. It is the act of keeping faith with your brothers that is valuable, not the secrets.

Not even the handshakes or secret passwords are the real value because there are very few people who want to break into a masonic lodge or would get so far as the password if they were strangers. It’s not like sneaking into the back of a big church where you won’t be noticed. The point is not to keep out “outsiders” or the “profane” (even though it is put in those terms sometimes in masonic ritual); the point is really to build strength of character by asking brothers to make a sacrifice, the sacrifice of keeping private things private and honoring the secrets of brothers (apart from obvious crimes). Yes, it is clubby. Sure. And that is a pleasure in itself. But its a pretty benign club, at least in the U.S. Masonry is probably not as powerful as some Ivy League fraternities and sororities are, because it represents a cross-section of all economic classes, not just the ruling elite.

And I’m sure it is true that there are many Freemasons who keep the secrets but don’t grasp the virtue they are supposed to be practicing. Keeping quiet about the degrees and their contents prevents bragging too. If you came home and started describing some of these dramas and the titles that go with them, it would sound pretty pompous. But it isn’t really because all of those titles and costumes and grand language are symbolic. They are there to tell a story and inspire each mason to think for himself. That is why there is precious little interpretation offered either. Even in the voluminous writings of Albert Pike, and all the thousands of other books written by Masons, there are no standard interpretations offered, no orthodoxy. Indeed, one of the points of Freemasonry is to avoid the trap of orthodoxy and dogma. I’m not sure why Albert Pike’s book is called Morals and Dogma except that, as I believe he says himself, he means “dogma” in its original, pure meaning, which is simply “teaching.” Since the 19th century, “dogma” has become a much more negative term for many people, signifying some teaching that a church insists upon and will never question.

Freemasonry encourages its members to ask questions, to seek, to quest, to take on the role of knights, not as “crusaders” in the sense of religious fanatics, but in the model of the legendary Knights Templar who went to Jerusalem seeking ancient wisdom and truth and who came away from their sojourn in the East with some radical ideas about the abuse of power and the need for religious authority to be separated from secular authority. Ironic, in an order that started out uniting the concept of a military order with that of a religious order in the age of chivalry.

I take this all very seriously. Maybe more seriously than is good for me. But Masonry involves the historical study of virtue as it relates to the principal myths of the West found in and around the Judeo-Christian tradition. Its message of tolerance, which originally applied to all of the warring sects of Christians, now has even more power as nearly all Western societies are becoming multi-cultural and one is regularly exposed to people of very different religious beliefs. For someone like me who has always been interested in religions, and since about age 17 in Eastern religions and philosophies, Masonry offers a unique organization in which such interests can be pursued for a lifetime.

It is not like college or university, where one can explore for a few years, but when you get your doctorate or the money runs out, you have to leave. I had hoped to become a professor and thus stick around in academia, but since that didn’t work out, the fraternity of Freemasonry offers me an alternative institution. It is full of structure and honors and friendliness. I’m sure there is also rivalry, jealousy, and backbiting, as in any group, but I haven’t run across much of that at all, and the tenets of Masonry specifically enjoin us against such behavior. Instead, we are admonished to be civil and point out each other’s mistakes gently, and mostly to encourage each other to grow in virtue and self esteem so that we can give generously of our time and talents to help others, brothers and non-brothers alike.

When I was in Phoenix and was trying to explain Masonry to my family, I felt distinctly awkward. It isn’t like converting to another religion but it isn’t like joining a men’s club either. Freemasonry has a reputation. For many it is highly suspect because of its secrecy. For many more it has a mystique that is almost as hard to overcome. I realized that among non-masons, I feel a bit self-conscious about being a Mason simply because it doesn’t mean anything very clear to non-masons. They might have all sorts of associations, vague or personal, or derived from the DaVinci Code and other sorts of conspiracy fiction. None of that has anything to do with the reality of the fraternity.

But, oh, well. I guess I’m used to the difficulty in explaining druidry already, which is similar in many ways because so poorly known to most people. We’ll see if I can get this juvenile fiction series written and then maybe more people will know more about both druids and masonic brothers. Still, writing stories about it will not even convey the reality of the lodge room or the temple. You just have to be there and you have to be initiated for it to make any sense or have any symbolic depth. To a non-initiate a lodge meeting would just look sort of goofy, I suppose. A lot of guys in suits and white aprons. I think Scottish Rite degrees would strike the uninitiated immediately as more interesting because they are more dramatic, more theatrical. But they certainly would not make much sense without the gradual accumulation of understanding of the symbolism and the method of teaching by allegorical legends rather than by the usual school method of factual expositions, chronologies, and formulae.

Well, by Christmas I will be a 32° Mason and proud of it. By next April, I will have completed my first Masonic year. I’ll have to have a party, I think. French Champaigne in honor of Jacques de Molay and Hughes de Payens and a big pooh-pooh on Philip the (Un-)Fair.

OWL

/|\ Eques ab Ivsticia et Veritas R . : C . :

P.S. My anam cara and clan mother Chalcedoni still hangs about keeping me company and is never far from my thoughts. May blessed spirits keep us from ever feeling alone.

In Memoriam Chalcedoni

Today I received quite a blow. A letter via electronic mail from the daughter of a close friend saying that she had passed away on Nov. 4th, the very same day I celebrated Samhuinn with my druid grove. I arrived at the celebration angry at having gotten lost on the way, and now I may understand why.

Chalci was a woman and a druid of exemplary character. Strong, stubborn, frank, witty, charming, and self-sacrificing to a fault. She encouraged me years ago to found Avalon Center and she, above everyone, believed in its success. As I wrote earlier in this log, the chancellorship was something I steeled myself to relinquish this Samhuinn, not because I was abandoning the dream of a druid college, but because of my own health issues.

That Chalci should choose this time to pass on through the veil is remarkable and I am left grieving and saddened, yet confident that she has gone on to a better life — or at least a healthy new body — and is applying her forceful energies to the eternal druid order to which we all aspire.

I feel the need to write her a poem but that will take me some time and thought.

For now let me say only that she remains my friend and druid sister and that I will always cherish our correspondence. With deepest affection as well as deep sadness,

Owl

Festive Board

Last night was my first meeting with a group of brothers who are working to found a new research lodge.  In masonic parlay, that means a lodge that will not have to own its own building, collect dues and so forth, but will operate on a more limited basis directed at specific goals, in this case the study and practice of the British ritual forms and etiquette for festive boards.  So, last night 14 of us met to practice a festive board based on the research of our esteemed Secretary and others.  Music, toasts, prayers, wine-takings and splendid food served family style.  All very reminiscent of the captain’s table on board a British Navy ship of the early 1900’s.  I was put in mind of the Aubrey-Maturin novels of Patrick O’Brien.

The chef obligingly prepared special gluten and dairy-free dishes for yours truly, but even so today I am feeling weak again.  I was feeling quite bad all day yesterday, however, so I cannot attribute it to the dinner.  I’m walking around like an octegenarian and feel like people are staring at me.  Of course, that might be the bowler hat.

The Research Lodge has been dubbed the Sir Winston Churchill Research Lodge and aims at British emulation degrees.  The name, and the lively Churchillian jokes and stories made me wish that I had a biography of Churchill and some of his own writings.  Another diversion.

Oh, well.

Today I took the bus to the bank to straighten out the problem with my credit card, then to the post office for stamps.  It was closed for veteran’s day but I could get stamps out of the machine.  Then I took the bus back but rode downtown to look for Churchill at the main library.  However, due to the appalling lack of support for our public libraries in Minnesota, which I can only contribute to the growing number of right-wing citizens who do not want to pay their taxes and use ideology as a cover for their own selfishness and greed (and ignorance), the library was closed.  Monday.  No learning on mondays, say the Rebubblicans and the other anti-socialists who would rather not spend money on books and learning, and certainly not on enabling others without sufficient funds to have a first rate public library system.

We just spend millions building this new and improved main library in Minneapolis, and the taxpayers can’t manage to keep it open on Mondays.  Well, of course, I should have remembered that this was the case, and my complaint rings rather hollow when I’ve just spent a lavish sum on a festive board with brother masons.  But I am trying not to spend more money on books.  Use the library!  Use the Scottish Rite Temple’s library for more obscure things. I have more than enough books on my shelves to keep me reading for the remainder of this life and I would feel better about myself and help my family more if I did read the books I already own, rather than acquiring more.

But I also must work to publish something of my own.  Not because I want there to be more books on the store shelves and not because I think my own thoughts are so marvelous that others must hear them.  No, it is because I need the money.  Or my household does.  Not me so much.  I will feel better if I know I am contributing something substantial to our household income and contributing to my daughter’s future education.

I’ve been reading the poems of Emily Brontë today.  They are so lovely and often so sad.  Everyone she loved died, it seems.  That period when tuberculosis was sweeping the world.  What a passionate heart and mind comes across to me.  How I long to know her better, to sit with her and make up fantasy worlds as her brother and sisters did, to write poetry and listen under the trees to her reading hers.

Owl

New Year New Tooth

Well, Samhuinn with Geal-Darach Grove was splendid even if I did get off on the wrong foot by getting lost on the way there and arriving all angry so I had to calm down.  That’s okay.  If they think I’m a tyrant, they will have more incentive to complete the three grades and oust me as chief druid.  I look forward to that.  I’m afraid, though, I have at least three years.

Meanwhile, on Friday after giving my presentation on Oghams I chipped a tooth.  The dentist told me it was my oldest tooth, my first six-year molar. He had redone the filling some years ago and now it gave up, so I have a temporary crown and will get the permanent one before we are off to Arizona for Thanksgiving.  I am looking forward to the feat with my mum and my sister and her family and then seeing the Grand Canyon again.  It has been many years and I have fond memories of the canyon.  It is one of the truly sublime places.

Last night was Scottish Rite.  I am not officially a 26° Mason or “Prince of Mercy.”  In the 25th degree we were asked to write down a fault we wished to commit ourselves to vanquish and a neglected duty we wished to better perform.  Coincidentally, these slips of paper were treated just as we treated those things at Samhuinn which we wrote down and placed into the fire and the cauldron.  It was almost the same ritual!  A good one in both cases.

Dedicating solemnly to overcome a fault is scary business.  It is taken on “with the help of God” which causes one to think about one’s God and trust in that entity to help.  As for neglected duties, I feel like my whole life is a patchwork quilt of neglected duties, unfinished projects, and false turns in the maze.  However, I often feel that writing is still my calling and that I will only feel truly better about myself if I can contribute more financially to my family.   And publishing something is about the only way, at present, I can think of to do that.

So, I’ve procrastinated with emailings all morning, but am going to try to turn to that after lunch.

Wish me luck!

Owl

Mystery School and Oghams

Friday today. Freya’s Day. Goddess of light and life, fecundity, brightness. Last night was Scottish Rite. I am privileged to live in Minneapolis (called the Valley of Minneapolis in S.R. terms), where our Temple still manages to put on all 29 S.R. degrees and does a spectacular job. Some of the actors could use a little more coaching, and occasionally the sound or light team is a bit off their cues, but the costumes are truly remarkable and the props delightful. And many of the principal actors are excellent in their delivery. I hope that I will have energy to contribute as a performer. Amateur theatricals are about my speed and it is a quite forgiving audience. I look forward to it.

Last night we had a brief Red Room presentation by the director of ritual at the Temple. There’s a neat job. Maybe some day I can aspire to that one. I’m fascinated with the ritual process and it is so delightful to work with a group and in an historical facility that is all equipped for the work. It’s a specialized theater with a limited repertoire of 29 plays, mostly one-acts, which are highly symbolical and generally depict episodes from the Bible and from world mythology put into a Masonic context. That means that they are altered to resonate with the Masonic legends of Hiram Abiff and Solomon’s Temple and the symbolic working tools of the stonemason. It also means that they are written for a cast consisting solely of men.

This point particularly struck me last night as the degree dramas branched out from the Biblical to the Egyptian and the story of the death and resurrection of Osiris was dramatized without the character of Isis. I thought to myself how odd this was for anyone who knows the myth and also wondered how many of the candidates in my class do know it. Retelling that myth in its actual form might make an interesting Red Room talk. I should volunteer.

All of the evening’s drama presented the idea of the Mysteries, the mystery schools as they are called. The lectures (reading) accompanying the presentation of the degree, talk about the Mysteries of Eleusis and their importance. Freemasonry is designed to emulate the mystery schools, teaching by symbols and, in its original intent, by each candidate participating in ritual dramas. It seems to me that a good deal of the authenticity and power of the degree rituals is lost when each candidate is not allowed to take part in the drama. In the first three degrees of masonry, given in the blue lodge, one participates more in the drama, though even so, with classes of several candidates, only one is chosen to be the principal candidate and go through the long version of the drama.

I wonder if Druidry has the potential right now, because new members come in at a slower rate and we are not dependent upon dues for paying the rent on our building, as a lodge is — if we druids could offer a deeper experience of the mystery tradition. Druid orders that grew out of and emulated Freemasonry must have initially been seeking the sort of initiatic mystery school experience for their members. OBOD however, downplays the ceremony. I think that even so, it is a stronger and more personal inward experience than sitting on the sidelines watching a Scottish Rite degree, but it does lack a little of the drama because it is not written to dramatize much except death and rebirth. It does not, for example, dramatize a particular myth or legend from the Celtic traditions, which it seems to me, with a little thought, it could.

I wonder if other druid orders do do this. That is one of the problems with mystery schools of any sort. Unless you join several of them and experience their degrees, you don’t know what the others are doing. In the case of Freemasonry, the fact that presumably almost no witches are Freemasons (obviously not the female witches), those practicing Wicca have no way of knowing that the symbol of the pentagram is widely used in Freemasonry, and that the use of the four elements, black hooded robes, and even some of the hand signs one sees in Wicca or Thelema, come from Freemasonry. Which is only to say that they come also from more distant sources where the Masons got them — through the general cauldron of creativity and study of comparative mythology and Eastern Mysteries, such as those of the Egyptians.

In the Scottish Rite degrees and lectures, I can detect the Victorian fascination with these other traditions, which were then newly revealed. The Egyptian mysteries were completely hidden until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, IIRC. But the Victorian comparative religion scholars were fascinated by the idea that Moses or Jacob might have been initiated into the Egyptian mysteries and adapted some of their material for their Jewish religion, which subsequently percolates through the Bible. Freke and Gandy, in their book The Jesus Mysteries, make a similar argument for the New Testament material. They seek to demonstrate that the whole story of Jesus and his disciples was based upon prior stories of god-men who died and were resurrected, such as Osiris and Tammuz and so on.

Well, I had better close off for the day. Tonight I go to St. Paul to deliver a presentation on the Irish Oghams to the brothers there. I am flattered to have been invited and hope that the brothers find it interesting and not boring. After dinner presentations are always somewhat risky, since the audience is bound to be a bit sleepy. At least there is no alcohol in the lodge, so they won’t be woozy-headed as well.

At breakfast this morning I told Linnea I was nervous about it and she said to me, “You did fine at Pagan Pride,” which really touched me. She had watched my presentations there and knew I was nervous then. It will go fine. I am just always nervous to speak in public beforehand. Once I get started, I’ll just go through my slides and talk. My only worry is that it might be longer than they really want.

Oh well.

C’est la vie.

James, by Grace of †God† Doctor of Philosophy
Druid & Knight of the Rose Cross 18°
Eques ab Ivsticia et Veritas

Closing Avalon Center

My heart is heavy yet also relieved of a burden I have carried for three years as today I have closed Avalon Center for Druidic Studies. Over the years I have had many people tell me it was a great idea. Many have encouraged me in the dream of a druid college. However, my health is getting no better. I continue to suffer from sleep deprivation, dust mite allergy, and digestive intolerance to gluten and dairy products. These three illnesses seem to have no cure and what treatments I have undergone have made only slight improvement.

One puts one’s journaling out on the Internet for strangers to read. My friend Philip has asked himself “why?” and I often wonder the same thing. Partly, it is a crie de coeur, reaching out through this odd new medium in the hopes of meeting new friends, people who think and feel like we do. But there is more to it than that. Putting a journal on line invites not just sympathy, but makes it possible for anyone on the Internet to know what is going on with me. It is a place where friends can check to see if I am still alive and well. Or, in my case perhaps it isn’t a matter of wellness but of what is today’s answer to the Grail Question: “What Ails Thee?”

I still have more obligations and duties that my energy may permit me to fulfill. My life may still need to be scaled back further, as they say. But putting Avalon Center to rest will free up a good deal of my energy. It has been a worthy experiment and we gave it the old college try (pun intended).

I’m still taking my Scottish Rite degrees. The discussion directors and the class members are exchanging e-mail comments on how we might improve the discussions after each degree. I am not terribly concerned. The discussions, while hardly satisfying, are always interesting. Essentially they are simply too brief. The Scottish Rite is an odd organization and I look forward to studying its history further. As it is structured, it seems as if the degrees ought to have some substance to them. They require serious and weighty vows to pursue virtue and behave as a good fellow. But my academic breeding makes me feel that each of the 33 degrees really ought to have some particular work attached to it and each person entering a degree be allowed to do that work for a time before moving on to the next degree. Requiring us to watch a ritual drama and engage in 15 minutes of discussion about it, with optional outside reading, is not sufficient work to make the degrees very meaningful.

Some of the degrees do mean a lot to me. For example, I wear my 14° ring of the Perfect and Sublime Master Mason with pride and deep feeling. Seeing it on my hand, and seeing one on the hand of another brother, inspires me to remember that the Great Architect of the Universe is with me always and that my spirit guides do care about me as a person, even in my darkest hours of melancholy. The Rose Croix degree also is very meaningful to me. Receiving that rose meant so much to me and the title itself, which one is entitled to use in one’s signature, is the knighthood I have wanted since I was a boy reading the stories of King Arthur and the Table Round. We are asked to take on a particular virtue to which we are dedicated and append that beneath our signature in Latin. I chose “Eques ab Ivsticia et Veritas” Knight of Justice and Truth, though in Latin it means more than is connoted in English. Ivsticia means “fairness and fair-dealng” and Veritas means “seeking the truth and being truthfull” not some abstract notion of “universal truth” much less “God’s Truth.”

As a Druid I am not required to profess belief in any gods. My order does not require it. Yet, it is implied that one believes in something beyond the material world, even if that something is conceived of as the human psyche or the anima mundi. As a Mason, I am require to profess a belief in God, but the nature of that deity is not stipulated except that it be an entity who has the power to enforce one’s oaths and vows. Christians may believe in a God who doles out punishments to us puny creatures on Earth. I do not. Rather, I belief in the God within us.

Some people have a god and some do not. I use the lower case “g” to indicate that I am not using the word as a proper noun but simply as a common noun. A god (or goddess if you like) is an indwelling entity that some of us have and some of us, perhaps, lack. Maybe atheists do not have a god. It might be something like musical talent, or artistic talent, or ambition. Some people have it and some people don’t. Maybe everyone has a little god, or maybe not. Some people definitely seem to have a very big god in them. They have unshakable faith in themselves, believe that the universe itself loves them and guides what they do.

I’ve believed in the direction of my gods for years. I’ve thought that they were telling me what to do, inspiring me and calling me to achieve certain goals. Now, I’m less sure. Well, I never was very sure. I always doubted to some degree. I suppose people who achieve great things and accomplish much that will outlast their own life span are people with strong inner gods, a strong sense of Self, a strong ego too. I seem to lack those things and no longer expect to produce anything that will outlast me, except the wands I have made. Who knows how long they will last? So have I fulfilled my vow of the 19th degree of the Scottich Rite to ” endeavor to do something for the benefit of my country and the world that shall live after I am dead”? Making art doesn’t seem quite grand enough for that statement. Benefit one’s country and the world? Wow! That’s a tall order.

It might be that I can dedicate myself to finishing some of the books I’ve planned over the years. I’ve always wanted to just write books, but have never gotten anything finished to the point where I wanted to give it to a publisher. But leaving behind a book hardly seems like it is of much benefit to country and world. It is at best of benefit to a few readers who get something out of the book.

God-willing I shall leave behind a daughter, but one can hardly count that as an achievement. It would be unfair to her to expect her to change the world or benefit the country for me. One gets the feeling that Albert Pike meant serving one’s country in some official capacity, politically, or perhaps starting an institution or endowing some organization or school. Well, I tried for three years to dedicate myself to Avalon Center; three years that seem like three decades. And I cannot keep up the pace. I’ve never been an athlete, but it is fairly obvious that those who want to build something to leave behind them when they are dead, need to work at it patiently for many, many years. Three years is not enough to expect anything to last. What I have built is purely ephemeral and will dissolve away to dreams as soon as I let go of the organizational structure. It is like a house of cards, or even less stable than that, just a house of relationships and words. If the relationships had grown into something lasting and solid, then the organization might have outlived me, but as it is, this was not the case.

Well better luck next time to whoever takes up the calling next.

I will continue to work to get to know and understand these inner gods. They are beautiful and I love them, but they seem weak and ineffectual. Perhaps the Jewish scriptures teach us to expect too much of our gods. But one cannot judge. Others evidently think that a god helps them achieve success, love, wealth, happiness, contentment, friendship, etc. They are content to know that God love them as a Father. But that is not much comfort to me. The metaphor is likely to be more comforting to a child who has a loving father who takes care of him or her, providing food, shelter, love, and affection. Now that I am a father and no longer have a father of my own, the metaphor seems more worrisome than reassuring.

God is the perfect father we wish we had or we wish we could be. An ideal. A dream. Do I have such a perfect father (or mother) within me? That is the question and the quest, I suppose. Those atheists who can confidently say, there is no such thing as ghosts and gods, do not have to expend energy on that question. But for those of us who cannot shake off the inner voices calling us and conversing with us, and who cannot have faith in atheism any more than we can have faith in theism, the question becomes a part of life.

Undoubtedly, there are friends and relatives of mine who would say I just don’t have enough to do and spend too much time thinking and brooding. They might be right. But remember that brooding is the only way to hatch an egg.

In Love and Light,

  OWL /|\  18°

Eques ab Ivsticia et Veritas Rose Croix

Religion and Facts

Reading an article on Afghanistan in Smithsonian Magazine this morning at the breakfast table, I was struck once more about the differences between Sunni and Shi’a within Islam. My memory may be a bit fuzzy here, but as I recall the basic split between these two sects of Islam was and is based on a difference of opinion about the succession of the Caliphate after Mohammad. Every religion or organization of any kind faces this sort of problem. Especially in the case of religions where the founder is often imbued with special holiness and awe, the matter of succession can be a problem. In druid orders this quandary has only emerged a few times. In the case of the Brotherhood of the Universal Bond, the succession after Robert MacGregor-Reid led to the founding of OBOD by Nuinn. In the case of ADF in the States, Isaac Bonewits stepped down as archdruid and the organization democratically elected a new “president.”

Quite often I attribute religious intolerance and mutual hatred between members of different sects to be caused by an inability to distinguish between metaphorical truths and historical facts. In the case of the Sunni- Shi’a schism many differences of belief have grown up over the centuries in which they took their separate paths. However, it was the factual split over succession that lay at the root of the problem. Of course, that sort of argument is sometimes just a cover for deeper differences of belief within an organization. But, anyway, it interests me.

In the case of druid groups, we have just the germ of this sort of antipathy in the Celtic reconstructionists who insist on the truth of certain facts based upon the testimony of current scholarship. Amateur scholars are not tolerated and people like Iolo Morganwg, Robert Graves, Gerald Gardner, George MacGregor Reid, and Douglas Monroe, who publish things and make pronouncements based on their own creativity but claim to be drawing on historical sources — these fellows are rejectd with sneers of derision as frauds, forgers, and “false druids.”

That sort of attitude has never struck me as either healthy or constructive. It seems to me based on a very narrow understanding of human creativity and indeed a narrow understanding of academic scholarship and the amount of creativity that is involved in any act of interpretation. Facts, contrary to popular belief, never speak for themselves. So, a religion that attempts to construct its faith on facts is, ironically, not basing it on a solid foundation, but on shifting sands. Indeed, I might go so far as to say that scholarly opinion constitutes shiftier sand than religious dogmas. The structure of academia (at least these days) tends to pit each generation against the one before in a sort of Oedipal struggle for the son’s to discredit the interpretations or theories of their fathers. The son metaphorically murders the father in order to possess Sophia, the mother-goddess Wisdom.

That said, I do not recommend that religions ignore historical facts, the accumulated wisdom of generations of scholars, and base their faith on older authorities who had never even heard of modern notions of fact-checking or evaluation of sources. It’s hard to question the motives and intention of the author of a religious text when that author is assumed to be infallible and omniscient.

Fortunately for modern druidry, books are not revered in that way. The old druids were smart fellows to forbid that their teachings be written down. They understood, I suspect, just what happens when a living person’s ideas get written down in a book and distributed by disciples. After a few generations, the author is deified and the words of the book fetishized and then, because words and books are always subject to interpretation, people start fighting and killing each other in defense of their interpretation of the words. If, on the other hand, you do not write your ideas down, you stand a slightly better chance of your followers having to think for themselves. Maybe not, but its a good plan.

It might be, of course, that later generations will simply argue about the oral traditions. We get a lot of that too in witchcraft and even in druidry. A couple of years ago on the OBOD message board we were visited by the author John Hughes who has written a couple of books, one of them on Celtic Sex Magic and another on herbs. Knowing how publishers work, I don’t know if one can strictly blame Mr. Hughes for the emphasis on sex in his books. But what did emerge in forum conversations with him was that he was quite a rambler and full of suggestions that he had secrets nobody else had — especially all those silly English druids. He claimed that his practices and beliefs were passed down to him from his grandfather, which is one of those claims that is all too common among witches and druids. Almost always when such claims are made the grandfather or grandmother in question is dead and cannot corroborate the claim. Also, they never seem to leave any documentary evidence behind them, so there is no way to corroborate the claim that way either. We cannot rationally jump to the conclusion that the claim is false and the person making the claim a fraud, but there is no way to judge either way, except by evaluating the content of whatever “secrets” they are willing to submit to public inspection and criticism.

If everyone who had a legitimate oral tradition in their family would share it with other people honestly without pretense, we might hope to get somewhere in the study of these family traditions. Maybe we will get to that point. Maybe even now there is an academic historian out there who is attempting to interview such people and to compile and evaluate their family traditions.

This is why I feel that druidry, most especially, needs to stick to its position of valuing scholarship alongside individual inspiration and keeping the two things distinct in our minds. We need the objective scholarship of non-druids and non-witches to help us see the facts, so that we too can interpret them better. You can hardly hope to arrive at a true interpretation of history without discovering the facts first. But even after the facts have been brought to light and published, we as a community have a duty to interpret those fats ourselves, examine our own assumptions, examine other people’s assumptions, and consider how our creative efforts relate to the facts and the academic interpretations of them.

The oghams are a classic example of this. In the course of the 20th century, Robert Graves’s book The White Goddess was tremendously influential in bringing to public attention the complex and enigmatic poems of the Welsh and Irish traditions. Moreover, his interpretations of the texts as a poet and amateur Welsh scholar (who didn’t actually read Welsh) influenced several subsequent authors in their interpretations of the oghams. The famous Tree Calendar of Graves was, for many years, accepted as a scholarly interpretation and indeed a fact. The Celts used this lunar calendar of the trees and it was the secret key to the meaning of the oghams. Well, today we know better. It seems likely that Graves’s interpretations will not stand up to scholarly scrutiny. I don’t even think they make a great deal of sense internally. I find The White Goddess to be a very poorly written book full of digressions and contradictions, and things that just don’t make sense to me.

Now, for me, as a literary scholar of sorts, the fact that I disagree with an author’s interpretation of some poetry or other texts is nothing new. It happens all the time. I have an radically different opinion on Keats’ poem “Lamia,” for example, than a dozen other literary scholars who have interpreted it. But who cares? The problem is that with the Welsh materials, so little of the scholarship on the subject is publically known and The White Goddess became a widely reprinted cult classic in the 1960’s when there were lots of readers looking for a Goddess-religion. Having a well-known author on the Greek myths write a book suggesting that there was a religon of the mother-goddess underlying Welsh and Celtic cultures was very exciting and could be used to justify one’s own desires and beliefs.

I’ve seen Carl Jung used in the same way. Although his ideas were rejected by mainstream academic psychologists and the medical profession, for the most part, his books and ideas spread like wildfire in popular New Age culture so that archetypes and synchronicity became household words and references to Dr. Jung were used to justify all sorts of things. But the fact is that just because someone has a doctorate doesn’t make them a perfectly reliable source of ideas, much less a part of mainstream thought. The other side of this slippage between facts and interpretations and theories is the inhernet desire on the part of New Age devotees to reject mainstream thought. The anti-Establishment attitudes of the 1960’s and 1970’s caused many people to believe in writers simply because they were rejected by the mainstream.

Now, I myself am an inveterate Jungian, but I do understand that many of his ideas are not accepted by today’s psychologists. That doesn’t necessarily make the psychologists wrong and it does not necessarily make Jung wrong. They just have different points of view, different lenses through which they are viewing the psyche and the ‘texts’ of client’s dreams and fantasies. Jung straddled several disciplines, offering interpretations of myths legends, and alchemical texts as well as his clients’ dreams. Crossing disciplines in this way will almost guarantee that everyone else in academia will reject your ideas.

One of the fascinating things about Jung is that while he was rejected after a generation within academic psychology (which turned to behaviorism and then cognitive feedback), he was taken in and beloved by at least one generation of English professors. Psychoanalytic criticism is still alive and well, though not as fashionable as it used to be. Archetypal criticism was taken up by others, or rather we might better say that Jung’s archetypal psychology clicked with archetypal criticism of the sort practiced by the likes of the late great Northrup Frye, author of The Great Code and Anatomy of Criticism.

So, we can see that in academic circles, and in medicine or sciences, we move from facts, which are the raw data collected from experiments or observations, or the recorded dreams of clients, or interviews with subjects. We take these facts and interpret them according to certain assumptions and theories. We create systems of interpretation. Then the next generation tears those systems apart, criticizes them and comes up with new ones. Until you get to Deconstructionists who just like to tear apart any system at all to demonstrate that all interpretative systems come apart.

If our druidry (or any other religious system we choose to make meaning out of life) is to carry on and not devolve into schisms and in-fighting, we need to understand the dynamic of interpretation and interpretative systems. We need to understand that practically all religious beliefs and spiritual ideas come from human creativity and imagination. This does not disqualify them or invalidate them. It does not mean we should discard religion entirely as a load of codswollop. Religious experience is part of being human and so needs to be understood and enjoyed, like other parts of humanity. But we must learn that we do not need to kill our neighbors or persecute them for enjoying other kinds of religious experience than we do. The analogy to sexual preferences and kinks should be lost on no one. Indeed, religious preferences and sexual preferences often get a bit muddled and confused with one another.

But now, to more important matters of fact. My daughter is at last awake and I must make her breakfast.

From the Owlery,

Alferian

Hello world!

Well, I don’t know that I really need more than one web log.  Do ship’s captains keep more than one log?  As my LiveJournal blog is officially for me to record the goings-on in the Chancellor’s Office of Avalon Center, I shall dedicate this one to more personal musings, and make an effort to post more frequently.

Today I am catching up with a backlog of e-mail.  No, actually, I am spending time setting up this blog.  However, I need to answer a score of owls that have been sent to me on various topics, druidical and masonic.  Linnea has piano lessons after school and I have a sink full of dishes and a pile of laundry to fold, which I am ignoring at the moment.  Till school is out at 3:40 (that is when the bus arrives here), I need to attend to a couple of customer orders that need mailing.  A splendid wand that I made at one of our druid grove camps a couple of years ago has finally caught to the eye of its true owner.  It’s utterly unique because when I found the branch it just happned to have a stag’s face and little twig antlers at the end. I carved an ogham band on it that says “the Stag of Summer” on it.

Speaking of ohgams, among my projects coming due soon are a talk I am giving on oghams at the St. Paul Royal Arch Chapter No. 1 on November 2nd.   It is supposed to be a well-attended open meeting, so I hope to be able to teach a bit about druidry, the Celts, and hand out some brochures on Avalon Center.  But I’m not going to talk about ACDS here.  See the Chancellor’s Journal for that.  I have some classes I am trying to get up online before Samhuinn too, so that any prospective students who might be lurking out there have something to enroll in.

Other than Avalon business, I am enjoying the Scottish Rite very much, going through the degrees every Thursday evening.  I am currently a Knight Rose Croix and still have my somewhat faded red rose on my desk, a beautiful rose give to us when we received the degree. Every degree comes with its own high-falutin’ title but Knight Rose Croix is one I hold dear and consider an expression of an inner identity that I have had for, oh, these many lifetimes.  This week I’ll be starting the “philosophical degrees” of the Council of Kadosh.  They seem more priestly in tone rather than chivalric, but despite my innate suspicion of priestliness, I am sure I will enjoy them and the continuing search for the Lost Word.

But I mustn’t give away too many secrets, you know.

I’m thinking of writing a presentation on Freemasonry to give at local libraries or events and get on a speaker’s bureau.  A presentation that introduces people to Freemasonry who know nothing about it.  It amazes me how few people have even heard of the Masons and far fewer in this day grasp what a marvelous fraternity it is full of wonderful dramas that aim to teach virtues.  And, of course, one doesn’t teach virtues as one teaches automotive repair or plumbing.  One can only get people to think about virtues, prompt them to examine their own thoughts and behavior, and to make the decision to cultivate themselves as better human beings.

So, back to the correspondence…

– Alferian /|\