Witches Brew

I have feasted on roast pork, which the Ancient Celts believed was the food of immortality. The magical pigs belonged to the God Manannan; slaughtered in the evening for the feast, the pigs were reborn again in the morning. (Just as the leftovers of my feast will be resurrected for most of this coming week…) Roast pork, acorn squash, Arbor Mist blackberry merlot wine cooler, and a big cinnamon roll. And now I am watching Betelgeuse.

The Celts considered Samhain to be the end of the year. Debts were settled, law cases were heard, chieftains renewed their vows of loyalty to their kings, and the kings swore loyalty to the High King in Tara. At the end of summer and the beginning of the “dark months” the veil between the ordinary world of the living and the spirit worlds of the dead and of Faerie was at its thinnest. Many of the great hero tales, which were often tales of transformation, began with a mysterious visitation at Samhain.

This is the time of year when we remember departed friends and loved ones. My parents have been gone for thirty years, and I miss them. Our house was open to people of different races and religions, and I am sorry that I am not as tolerant as they were. They purchased some acreage in the country where we had some memorable cookouts. One Halloween Dad invited the young furniture movers who worked with him and their dates. The path back to the pasture was lit by Jack-O-Lanterns. The girls were amazed by the golden pumpkins–living on the South Side, in the inner city they had never seen Jack-O-Lanterns. They had never roasted hot dogs over an open fire or toasted marshmallows. (And they took the pumpkins home with them, and we had none left for Halloween.)

These days we are all disconnected from our food supply and the source of our consumer goods. And we are facing the crisis of Peak Oil. As cheap fuel evaporates and prices of everyday goods skyrockets, we will have to rebuild local manufacturing and local food networks. Witches Brew turned two years old this month, and I have decided to launch a new blog Brewing A Pagan Permaculture.

According to Wikipedia: “Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and perennial agricultural systems that mimics the relationships found in natural ecologies. It was first developed by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren and their associates during the 1970s in a series of publications. The word permaculture is a portmanteau of permanent agriculture, as well as permanent culture.”

Brewing a Pagan Permaculture will talk about creating an urban agriculture and an urban Pagan community in the years we have available before Mother Nature hits the reset button on our consumerist society. I’ll have stories about urban pioneers, alternate energy sources, and the Post Industrial Society. I’ll have links to innovative websites and lists of useful books. I will feature Pagan leaders who are already working on permaculture and the post-industrial economy. And I will try to create a Pagan theaology of decay and renewal.

This summer I have been following The Archdruid Report, a blog by John Michael Greer. Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America (AODA) Greer has been blogging about the end of the Industrial Era and the coming of the Deindustrial Society. Greer is lucid when he talks about economics:

Over the last few weeks, my posts here on The Archdruid Report have tried to sketch out a way of understanding economics that doesn’t contradict the laws of physics or the evidence of history. Perhaps the central concept I’ve been developing along these lines is the sense that there is no such thing as “the” economy in any human society; there are, rather, three economies, each of which follows distinctive rules.

The primary economy, in this way of looking at things, is the natural world itself, which produces something like three-quarters of the goods and services on which human beings rely for survival. The secondary economy, which depends on the primary one, is the collocation of labor, capital plant, and resources extracted from the primary economy that produces the other quarter or so of the goods and services human beings use. The tertiary economy, finally, is the system of social processes by which the products of the first two economies are allocated to people. This can take many different forms, of which the one most familiar to us is money.

“The Economics of Entropy.” July 29, 2009

For several years my friends have been disquieted by the prospect of peak oil, and I have watched The End Of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream and Richard Heinberg’s The Party’s Over: Oil, War, and the Fall of Industrial Societies. I am, however, a science fiction reader, so I just don’t get too stressed anymore by “the end of the world as we know it.” –Besides, I’ll most likely be dead before everything goes to Hell.

But seriously, I have been thinking lately, that Peoria is well situated if the oil wells do run dry. We have the Illinois River–if we don’t let it become mud flats. A fully loaded barge can carry as much cargo as a thirty-four mile convoy of semis. We do have coal. We can make soy diesel. The core of the city is walkable. We still have railroad tracks. We do have farmland. The Shoppes at Grand Prairie will most likely be abandoned, but we can probably maintain a comfortable standard of living here.

This week John Michael Greer confirms my intuition. Greer has just moved from Portland, OR to Cumberland, MD. Greer says “Cumberland is a quintessential Rust Belt town.”

Founded in the 18th century along one of the most important transport routes linking the east coast to the interior, it became by turns a canal center, a railroad hub, and a thriving industrial town where factories powered first by water and then by local coal anchored an economy lively enough to make Cumberland the second largest city in Maryland. From its red brick factories and faux-medieval county courthouse to its distinctive local beers – Queen City Brewery was the big name here until it went under in the Seventies – it’s hard to think of a detail of the old American industrial heartland that wasn’t present and accounted for.

But when Cumberland’s economy collapsed, the population dropped almost 50%.

The conventional wisdom these days holds that towns like Cumberland have a future only if they can find some way to catch the coattails of the booming (well, formerly booming) economies of the two coasts. Cumberland city boosters have done their level best to follow that lead in recent years, with tourism and the arts scene as focal points, and they’ve had modest success so far. If I’m right about the future of America and the rest of the industrial world, though, they might want to consider raising their sights a bit, because the tide of history that left Cumberland and so many towns like it high and dry may just be turning.

Cumberland is in the north Central Appalachians, not far from Amish country in Pennsylvania and just across the river from West Virginia. The big cities of the East Coast are only a few hours away by train. Greer and his wife Sara are betting:

More energy-efficient transport modalities will tend to replace less efficient ones because they, and thus the goods they ship, will be more affordable; equally, diseconomies of distance will tend to outweigh economies of scale and foster the reemergence of regional economies. Among the likely beneficiaries of these changes are the towns that thrived best in an earlier, more regional economy — those that are well served by rail and water transport, surrounded by farming regions that don’t depend on irrigation, not too far from major markets, and provided with ample and inexpensive real estate for the factories and warehouses of a downscaled and relocalizing industrial economy.

That sounds like Peoria to me. Maybe we don’t want to convert every warehouse on the riverfront to loft apartments just yet….

International Pagan Blogging Month has introduced me to a multiverse of other Pagan bloggers. While several CIPS members are set up on Facebook, MySpace, or PaganSpace, nobody admits to blogging. Through Chrysalis’s site, however, I have been following a daisy-chain of Pagan contributors. How to chose? Do I want to read Witches and Scientists? How about Executive Pagan? Deaf Pagan Crossroads? What about Musings of a Quaker Witch? Or Pagan Chaplaincy? I feel like a kid in a bookstore.

I have subscribed to the “Minneapolis Paganism Examiner” written by Murphy Pizza–an unlikely name, I’ll grant, but a refreshing change from monikers like Lady Silver Fairyslippers. (Yes, some people do get overly creative when they find their Pagan path, and, yes, we do make fun of them.). According to her online bio, Murphy Pizza is:

[A] contemporary Pagan practitioner-scholar (with a Ph.D.). She is a cultural anthropologist specializing in religions and American religious cultures, and has been a practicing Pagan for more than 13 years. Her dissertation (soon to become a book), Paganistan, is about the history and formation of the Pagan community in the Twin Cities, and she has several academic publication credits on contemporary Paganism.

To my delight, Murphy is an unabashed, unapologetic Urban Pagan. And a science fiction/fantasy fan…! It does my New Urban heart good to read “Earth Reverence in the City“:

Earth-reverent folks are not running off to communes or the wilderness and growing organic vegetables to find sacredness in their lives, a pattern often romanticized in some contemporary Pagan books. Well, alright, some are. But contemporary Paganism sprouted in the cities — it has always been an urban phenomenon. Granted, it did come with a lot of the romantic frustration in back-to-the-land philosophies that permeated the social milieu of the 1960’s, but today’s Pagans know that the sacred Earth is not hidden under concrete — our cityscapes are places of spirit and power as well.

I know I am going to enjoy reading about Murphy’s Pagan journey in Minnesota’s Twin Cities.

As I said previously, I am Pagan and I have values, but there has been, in the past, some doubt that my values were Pagan enough.. Nevertheless, “My Pagan Values”:

I) Earth-based Spirituality (not just Nature-based.)
II) Structure & Infrastructure
III) Scholarship & Contemplation
IV) Community
V) Educating the Younger Generation

I) Earth-based Spirituality (not just Nature-based.)
I like Nature in small doses, but cities are magical, too. In “The Magic of Place” (newWitch Magazine, Winter, 2008), pp. 17-20. Rev. Galina Krasskova wrote “The land remembers. I know that within modern Paganism and, to a lesser degree, Heathenry, city life is often viewed as somehow less sacred, less connected to the natural rythyms and cycles of nature than rural life. And in some cases that might be true, but I have found over the years that there is powerful magic inherent in cities–just as much as may be found in the most deserted of country dwellings.”

Krasskova lists “Five Steps to connecting with the Gods–in your hometown”;

1) “Learn the folklore of your city…Getting to know the spirit and energy of your hometown is the first step toward incorporating that awareness into your regular work.”

2) “Create magical places of your own. Find places that call to you and begin incorporating them into your ritual work.”

3) “Honor the spirit of your city…In Norse tradition, vaettir (singular: vaet) are land and nature spirits. The spirit of a city is something like a large vaet. Honor it as an ally just as you might honor spirit allies or ancestors.”

4) Honor the ancestors of your city…Go to the local cemetery. Walk around and read the headstones… Bring offerings to the dead, even if they are not your dead, and do so in the name of your ancestors.”

5) Create a public altar…Set up a public altar to the Deity of your choice after honoring that Deity regularly for a month…It is the perfect way to combine honoring the Gods with experiencing the energy and spirit of your city or town…[N]o matter where you are, you’re standing on sacred ground.”

II) Structure & infrastructure

I was not meant to be a rolling stone, holding each sabbat in a different park or lodge, doing ritual out of a trunk. I do not like wondering if we will have potable water, a place to plug in the coffee pot, a porta-potty within a block’s walk… I don’t like standing around for twenty minutes while we figure out how to keep the candles from blowing over. I don’t like wondering if I am going to give someone food poisoning because I couldn’t keep my potluck dish at the right temperature. When you do ritual over and over in the same place, that place fills with power and becomes part of the ritual.

I am not enamored with spontaneity–writing a new ritual eight times a year, fumbling with printouts and miscues. Again, when a particular ritual is done regularly, it gathers power. Time and again I am reminded that Pagans don’t need temples or churches, that a familiar liturgy somehow rots your spiritual roots. Sorry, but I hear commitment phobia. I want a spiritual home, be it ever so humble.

And we are still a very young religious movement–we are still in the process of developing the comfort literature, the scholarship, and the spiritual reflection that makes provides the underpinnings of older religions. Of all the things I left behind when I left Christianity, I miss that inherited richness. I value books like The Pagan Book of Living and Dying, by Starhawk and M. Macha Nightmare and Philosophy of Wicca by Amber Laine Fisher. I look forward to books that go beyond spellcasting and how to write (yet another) ritual.

III) Scholarship & Contemplation.

Here’s where I tend to rub fellow Pagans the wrong way. I ask a lot of questions, I don’t settle for easy answers. If Paganism is so wonderful, why did so many Pagans convert to Christianity? The Galatians were a Celtic people. They were early adopters of the Christian religion, and they spread the new faith from the Middle East through Spain and into Ireland. Why? They were not forced; what did they gain? If the Neo-Pagan movement is to be more than a flash in the pan, I think we have ask ourselves questions like this and think about the answers. (For starters I recommend The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity by Richard Fletcher.)

IV) Community

Many Pagans place high value on self-reliance. Family and neighbors make up their safety net. Let the Christians build their busybody charities. Charity is just a vehicle for proselytizing and telling other people how to run their lives..

The truth is, we are all caught up in a global web of interdependence, and when the wind blows, the whole web trembles. Pandemics, economic woes, climate chaos, an increase in hate crimes… In a essay “The Coming of Deindustrial Society: A Practical Response,” (October 5, 2004) John Michael Greer, The Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America (AODA), wrote:

The key to making sense of constructive action in a situation of impending industrial collapse is to look at the community, rather than the individual or society as a whole, as the basic unit. We know from history that local communities can continue to flourish while empires fall around them. There are, however, three things a community needs to do that, and all three of them are in short supply these days.

First, a community needs some degree of local organization. Our present culture here in America has discarded most of the local organizations it once had, in favor of a mass society where individuals deal directly with huge government and corporate institutions. This has to be reversed. The recent move to reinvigorate civil society is a step in the right direction. Joining or creating a local community group, and helping to revive local civil society, will help provide your community with voluntary networks of cooperation and mutual aid in difficult times.

The second thing a community needs in the twilight of industrial society is a core of people who know how to do without fossil fuel inputs….Survival skills such as organic gardening, low-tech medicine, basic hand crafts, and the like need to be learned and practiced now, while there’s time to do so.

The third thing a community needs is access to basic human requirements, and above all food. Very large cities are going to become difficult places to be in the course of the approaching collapse, precisely because there isn’t enough farmland within easy transport range to feed the people now living there…What’s needed is the framework of a production and distribution system around which this can take shape.

Greer recommends:

One often-neglected but useful resource is the old fraternal orders – the Masons, the Odd Fellows, the Grange, and so on…Joining such an organization, or some other local community group, and helping to revive local civil society is a crucial step that will provide your community with essential networks of cooperation and mutual aid in difficult times. The Stormwatch Project website is specifically aimed at helping fraternal orders and similar organizations get ready to fill such a role.

We need to move away from self-reliant individuals to self-reliant communities that will look after our elders, our children, our sick, our economically challenged members.

V) Educating the Younger Generation

And speaking of our children, I tend to cringe when I hear folks say, “I had religion crammed down my throat when I was a kid. I am not going to force my beliefs on my own kids! If they are interested in doing ritual, fine. Let them discover their own beliefs! Everyone has to find their own path.”

O-kay! For the last eight years this country has been in the grip of conservative Christianity. Suck all the oil out of the ground, blow up mountaintops and scoop out all the coal, foul the oceans and strip the rain forests? It doesn’t matter because we are living in the End of Times and the Rapture is on the way. Base our political alliance with Israel on biblical prophecies? Legitimize religious or gender discrimination with Bible verses? Turn a blind eye to science because it doesn’t fit somebody’s creation myth?

No, no, no, no, no! This tired old world desperately needs some new ways of thinking and acting. We need to impress upon our kids that Time is a spiral; that what goes around, comes around. We need to impress upon our kids that we are all embedded in a web of living systems. We need to teach them that death is a natural part of life–that we do not have to hold off death with heroic medicine or worship the unborn. The Goddess holds us at the beginning and the ending of our existence on Earth and does not let go! We remain a part of the Spiral; we reject that End of Times mentality.

We need to make them understand that the founders of this country had a spectrum of religious beliefs, and that discrimination based upon the Bible is religious discrimination! We need to teach them that any system of science sufficiently advanced IS indistinguishable from magic AND any system of magic sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from science.

And those, friends, are my Pagan Values.

In a few hours the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure kicks off at the Metro Center in the magical heart of Peoria. Many people know about “ley lines” that link up prehistoric monuments and megaliths in Britain and the miles long Nazca lines in South America. Reputedly the points where ley lines cross resonate with psychic energy. I don’t know if anyone has ever searched for ley lines in Peoria, but I am willing to bet that there’s a big hot spot at the intersection of University and Glen. There’s a second node at the Water Tower in Peoria Heights and a node at University at Lake. I suspect there may be other points along the railroad line that comes out in Peoria Heights near Grayboy Motorsports.

Within this area are two libraries, two farmer’s markets, Lakeview Museum and the Planetarium, Peoria Players (where celebrants flock several times a year to that Modern Mystery Play, The Rocky Horror Picture Show), The Owen Center–home rink for figure ice skater Matt Savoie, the YWCA and the Peoria Regional Center for the Girl Scouts. And then there is the Race for the Cure.

Almost 18,000 walkers/runners and cheering supporters have signed up for the 24th Peoria Race for the Cure. That’s a huge outpouring of healing energy charging this small area of Peoria. Where does it go? Who does it benefit? Well, obviously it flows through the participants–the breast cancer survivors and their loved ones–who carry it home with them–but it also goes into the “spiritual aquifer” as it were of this special place within the Heart of Peoria. And a guess: it accumulates in the Lakeview Wilds, that patch of nature behind Lakeview Museum.

I heard there was a “Prayer for the Cure” event the other evening. I don’t remember hearing about a prayer service before, though I expect there usually is one. But I believe the race itself is a prayer, and that prayer goes to the Goddess Artemis, who may walk Lakeview Wilds. Artemis, a Greek Goddess, was the virgin huntress, Goddess of the Moon, protector of children, and the matron deity of women in childbirth. Women made offerings to her for a safe delivery, but Deities give and Deities take. Sometimes Artemis’s arrows took women during their “lying in.”

Goddesses evolve, Goddesses go out into the world. Not many western women die in childbirth these days, but they do die of breast cancer (and ovarian cancer and cervical cancer). Men die, too, from breast cancer. But the Goddess gives as well as takes. And she sends her blessings to all those–whether they know her or not–who run or walk or simply stand witness to the Race of the Cure.

The Riverfront Museum is “on”! Maybe. The referendum to raise $40 million (through a .25% increase in the Peoria County sales tax) has passed by the skin of its teeth, and it wouldn’t surprise me if opponents called for a recount. If this museum is going to be built, Build the Block supporters need to get their mojo on. It’s time for some serious Downtown magic.

Actually, the eye-catching signs that went up last fall around the empty Sears block were, magically speaking, pretty good. A successful spell should roll off the tongue and engage the senses. It should create a strong visual image of what the spell-caster wants to accomplish. Sigils–like charms or tattoos– are written symbols that can be charged with magical power. So images like “Slam Dunk” with a basketball plunging through the net in “D\/nk” are potentially very powerful. Colorful exhortations like Play it again, Peoria, Ground Breaking!, The Sky’s The Limit!, etc. do seem charged with magical intent.

But…there’s a lot of resistance to this project! So here’s one witch’s advice. It’s time to court the deva of the Sears block, and enlist its help.

“What’s a deva?” you are asking. According to Christopher Penczak in his book City Magick, “Devas are energies, or spirit forms, who create the patterns of reality on higher levels of existence. The word is originally from Hindu myth, meaning something akin to angel, but the New Age has adopted it to mean creators, or angels, of nature.”

The Romans called the guardian spirit of a place its genius loci. And it seems to me that in spite of all the bright and happy crap on the plywood walls, the deva of the Sears block is seriously cheesed off!

I am thinking, before we see any real progress on the Riverfront Museum, we might want to “make nice” with the deva. Would some flowers be too much to ask? You know, a little altar at the crossroads there at Main and Water Street with some ribbons and a candle or two? Maybe some sweets…. Pinwheels or wind chimes… Maybe some personal messages: “Dear Deva, I can’t wait for the new IMAX. Please, please, pretty please! Love you!” A guitar serenade or two…

Penczak goes on, “Some devas are called “overlighting,” because they organize their peers into subcategories around them… All cities have a devic spirit in control of them, In many ways, this is the spirit of the city itself. The overlighting deva of the city organizes the other spirits. The deva of New York City works with the deva of the Empire State Building, the deva of the Statue of Liberty, the deva of Central Park, and the devas of the East and West Villages.” We might want to stop and ask ourselves who is the overlighting deva of Peoria. WHERE is the ovelighting deva of Peoria? If it’s out on Allen Road these days, then need to call it home.

Penczak says, “Call on them in ritual. They want to make contact with you. Doing magick on their territory is going to effect them. The energy you send out for your spells will be working through these city architects… These spirit forms want to be in partnership with us. They want to be acknowledged by the mystics living with them. They are all waiting to be asked.”

I have not yet introduced myself.. I’m Sophie Gail, novice blogger, Pagan, and Witch. “Merry Meet,” as we say. I’ve not been practicing for a while, and I hope in these posts to rekindle a spark of magic in my life. –Or Magick, if you prefer.

So, why, you may ask, all the concrete? How come I didn’t choose a green forest cove for a theme or mysterious ruins by moonlight? Well, I like tree-hugging and moonlight as well as the next Pagan, but consider myself an Urban Witch. Born and bred in Peoria, I take power, when I focus, from her streets and parks, her river bluffs and valleys. I receive inspiration and encouragement on this path from author Christopher Penczak.

The stated purpose of this blog is to offer news and views that you won’t usually find in the Saturday “Faith & Values” in The Journal Star. Penczak’s City Magick: Urban Rituals, Spells, and Shamanism (Weiser Books, 2001) is a great place to start. Penczak says, “Nature comes in many forms. It finds a voice in anything created. All things are sacred. Everything–including concrete, glass, steel, and even plastic–come from the same source, Don’t be fooled into thinking things are unnatural. Why is one thing, like honey, made from materials found on Earth natural, while another, like a compact disc, made from different materials on the same planet, not natural? Both are made by other beings, bees and people respectively, from natural resources. The original materials go through a great change You can argue the merits of use, need, consumption, chemical change, and biodegradability, but neither item is more sacred than the other. Both are valued.”

I expect that you will read more about “the merits of use, need, consumption, chemical change, and biodegradability” in these posts. And more Christopher Penczak and urban rituals. For today I’ll say, “Merry Meet and Merry Part, and Merry Meet again!”