On the New Yorker Radio Hour recently, gnostic gospels scholar Elaine Pagels gave refreshing perspective on the topic of spirituality and religion. If you don’t know who this is, in the 1970s Pagels published a famous academic novel on the gnostic gospels which had been discovered in a buried pottery jar in Egypt twenty years earlier.
In the podcast she said her relationship to the texts of the Bible isn’t about faith; it’s about curiosity and imagination. Like so many of us drawn to the spirituality of Wicca and the Occult, Pagels is an excellent example of how you can retain the morals you may have learned from the Abrahamic faiths such as charity, community, compassion and kindness and bring them with you while moving forward in a new direction suited to your unique spiritual needs like magic, wonder and curiosity. For her, it was academia. For me, it was magic.
The two most significant Sabbats in the wheel of year are Samhain and Beltaine. A month from now, we enter into the second most important Sabbat in the year after Samhain- Beltaine. It’s the only other time on the wheel the veil thins enough that the spirit world can break through. Whereas in Samhain it is the moment that ushers in the season of Winter and the coming of Darkness, Beltaine is the moment before the season of Summer and the ushering in of Light. It is the inverse of Samhain, the Gateway of Darkness to Beltaine, the Gateway of Light.
I mention Pagels because part of my own journey into Wicca and the Craft has been how much of my previous religion Christianity to bring with me and how much of it to leave out. I will not lie that forming a community of witches isn’t as easy or convenient as finding a church to go to. Much of the secrecy surrounding magic still exists and many still reside in what is known as “the broom closet”. As someone who was previously closeted, coming out was not just a personal experience- it was a religious one. I grew up an Evangelical, a Pentecostal to be exact, and the language and imagery used to describe gay people I can only say is damaging to a child. That is why my new anchor in coming out became magic. It was not just a release from the damage inflammatory beliefs can cause children but it was also a resurrection of the self- of the person I was meant to become without the hurt which closeted me away from the world.
Pagels herself describes this same exact prejudice when after becoming born again in her adolescence, she left that community after the death of a close Jewish friend a year later. She details how when she revealed this passing to her acquaintances in her Evangelical community, they asked if he was born again and when she said no, he was Jewish, they then retorted oh well he is in hell.
This type of thinking is what I sought release from and is one of the reasons I found empowerment in a nature based religious cycle like the Wheel of the Year. Interestingly, Pagels references an academic study on how God or the Invisible Otherness become real. It is through the rituals we partake in that make our relationship with the other side an authentic real experience.
Let that be the lesson this coming Beltaine in the Gateway to Light. Whatever ritual you choose, believe in it because how much energy you put into it is how much energy you will get out.
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