I see Neopaganism and the New Age movement as the two somewhat overlapping wings of Third-wave Romanticism of the occult/spiritual sort. The First Wave occurred around 1800, the Second Wave around 1900; in both cases, plus and minus two or three decades, roughly. The Third wave of Romanticism was the Sixties Counterculture, similarly plus-and-minus.
The Ecology/Green movement is also a product of Third Wave Romanticism. And where the occult/spiritual and the ecological romanticisms overlap, I would call it Eco-romanticism; but better: Ecopaganism, since it has obvious inherent pagan roots. But in truth, strong New Age elements : biological science, future-focus, and utopianism, are inseparable from it.
This is the way I see it, anyway. These categories fit the realities pretty well, and the scheme serves as convenient ideology. For political reasons, ecologist-environmentalists may not want the cause of saving the Biosphere associated with Paganism, but what can one do?-- there has always been a strong affinity between Paganism (well, mostly) and a Nature-orientation, which was not the case with the Abrahamic religions, and though there have been those with a strong Christian background who loved and respected Nature (J. R. R. Tolkien and John Muir come to mind), and perhaps considerable ecological concern among the more liberal Abrahamic denominations over the last 50 years, the sacred books, traditions, and ideology counter a strong green/ecological adherence. Quite simply, like it or not, these religions have failed. Whereas, being new religions of the Third Wave, Neopaganism and NAM have been at least open to, and have often embraced environmentalism and ecologism. This is particularly so of Neopaganism, and that should be recognized and respected.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
From Neopaganism to Ecopaganism 1
If preserving the Biosphere intact becomes the foremost value of human cultures, everything in the culture must fall into a new arrangement. Whatever can be retained is altered to fit into an integral whole. Basic categories are recast, lines are redrawn.
Ecospirituality will become the ethos of the culture. Whatever forms it takes will be determined ultimately by what works. I assume that a 'pagan' element must predominate, as it seems that anything like West Asian monotheism (Judaism, Christianity. and Islam) cannot be functionally ecological, but how much any existing religion or spirituality could work is open to question. Anyhow, people adhering to existing religions are unlikely to turn an objective eye on the hindrances latent within them. But if they become seen to be hopeless, revitalizing reform movements may be able to alter them sufficiently to make their cultures ecologically functional.
But if you start with ecology as fundamental, you can find what seems to have had a positive effect in the past, and use that to develop the kind of spirituality or religion that is necessary. But every person has a cultural bias, and finally, it is what works for that person that counts. You can't just intellectually construct an ecological religion and expect many people to embrace it, even if it is designed to suit the prevailing zeitgeist as revealed in depth studies. A process of evolution should be expected to be necessary.
My cultural bias is late 20th century Western, Romantic, Countercultural, Anglophile and Germanic-- and Pagan, in a broad sense. And what I have developed of ecopaganism has come gradually from interactions with my subconscious imagination and from wide-ranging research. I don't claim any authority for myself or validity for my work, but I believe that there must be something in it worthwhile for some people. For all I know, nothing I have come up with is really original, but if it contributes somehow to a general development of ecological civilization, if only in a small way, it was worth the effort.
Ecospirituality will become the ethos of the culture. Whatever forms it takes will be determined ultimately by what works. I assume that a 'pagan' element must predominate, as it seems that anything like West Asian monotheism (Judaism, Christianity. and Islam) cannot be functionally ecological, but how much any existing religion or spirituality could work is open to question. Anyhow, people adhering to existing religions are unlikely to turn an objective eye on the hindrances latent within them. But if they become seen to be hopeless, revitalizing reform movements may be able to alter them sufficiently to make their cultures ecologically functional.
But if you start with ecology as fundamental, you can find what seems to have had a positive effect in the past, and use that to develop the kind of spirituality or religion that is necessary. But every person has a cultural bias, and finally, it is what works for that person that counts. You can't just intellectually construct an ecological religion and expect many people to embrace it, even if it is designed to suit the prevailing zeitgeist as revealed in depth studies. A process of evolution should be expected to be necessary.
My cultural bias is late 20th century Western, Romantic, Countercultural, Anglophile and Germanic-- and Pagan, in a broad sense. And what I have developed of ecopaganism has come gradually from interactions with my subconscious imagination and from wide-ranging research. I don't claim any authority for myself or validity for my work, but I believe that there must be something in it worthwhile for some people. For all I know, nothing I have come up with is really original, but if it contributes somehow to a general development of ecological civilization, if only in a small way, it was worth the effort.
Monday, February 7, 2011
In Search of Eco-paganism 6
So why didn't 'Native American spirituality' become a genre of Neopaganism, but was linked with it only as subsumed under 'Neo-shamanism'?
I'm not sure. There was much interest in 'American Indians' in the Sixties Counterculture years. Black Elk Speaks, if it wasn't readily available earlier, was rereleased as a paperback in 1972, and that book disseminated Lakota spirituality like nothing else around, I think. I was greatly affected by the accounts of Black Elk's visions. The amazing Seven Arrows by Hyemeyohsts Storm was published in 1972 as well, though I only discovered that much later. Vine Deloria Jr's God Is Red came out the next year. And no doubt there were other powerful presentations of Indian spirituality I missed or can't recall. There was also Carlos Castenada's Don Juan books, the first three of which came out in 1968, 1971, and 1972. These were something different, about sorcery rather than religion, and were categorized as 'shamanism', which was already known through Mircea Eliade's Shamanism. I read one of the Don Juan books at the time and was frightened by the melding of drug-induced hallucination and reality as described in harrowing scenes of confusion and supernatural menace. About the same time, I read about 'lucid dreaming' and had the same response--'No way do I want to go there!' There were also then creepy UFO-aliens books featuring abductions, sinister 'men in black', black helicopters, and other expressions of the black paranoia of the Seventies. Hypnotic regression tape-transcripts of the 'contactees' frightend me as much as the Don Juan accounts, though I withheld judgment on their veracity and was very leery of the UFO books after The Mothman Prophecies. Then I read articles sceptical of Castaneda's accounts . In both cases, I was not drawn to the dark weirdness-- I was by that time seeking spiritual sanctuary in the aftermath of the waning of the Counterculture. For me, Christianity was out, though many turned back to it in the Seventies. The pure spirituality of romantic moonlight through a cathedral's stained glass windows, etc. (Christmas card Christianity), still had appeal, but I was more drawn toward Buddhism and would have become a Buddhist, despite its grim cosmology, if I could have believed in karma and reincarnation. But I am not a 'believer'.
As for Native American spirituality, I don't think it attracted the kind of people drawn to Wicca, but it drew a good number of hippie-type American youth. In the Seventies, there were a number of top-40 songs about Indians, mostly as victims. The American Indian Movement made Indian grievances widely known. Liberals had developed a sensitivity to 'ethnic minorities' like 'Blacks' and Indians-- which may be why, outside the 'do what you will' Counterculture, it was considered bad form to dress-up like an Indian. But especially out West, hip youth might wear turquoise-and-silver jewelry, moccassins (or desert boots), headbands, or a kind of 'Indian look', as did working-men, businessmen, and retirees. Some of the young males were really 'into' Indianness. The peyote-partaking Native American Church was talked about among white hippies, was confused with the white jokester Neo-American Church, which was for partaking drugs-in-general. And the Don Juan books were widely read among serious psychedelicists. But apart from Sun Bear's Bear Tribe that was open to whites-- and he soon learned that hippie types were too self-indulgent and wayward to be other than a drag on the community-- I don't know of whites forming Indian spirituality groups comparable to witchcraft covens. So 'Neo-paganism', as that term became current, seemed to be more about witchcraft and similar magic-and-spitiuality groups. But I knew nothing about all this until the late 70s/early 80s. The New Age movement quickly outgrew these underground expressions with popular-oriented books and therapies and organizations with mystical/metaphysical human potential movement/self-help/pseudoscience formulas. As Native American attacks on white 'cultural appropriation' of their religions penetrated to the non-native world, white liberal sensibilities and solidarity would have inhibited the formation of 'white Indian' groups. But whether they would have formed otherwise, I don't know. Maybe some did. But Neopaganism in the Seventies was mostly in the vein of the European occult/romantic traditions. Since then, interest in 'primitive' peoples like Australian aborigines and pan-American indigenous peoples has grown in Neopaganism, with Native Americans as a sub-genre. In the Sixties, Hindu religion and Zen Buddhism and meditation had become popular, and since then, Tibetan Buddhism has become, too (though Buddhism is hardly Pagan, despite pagan elements in the Tibetan form). The 'Celtic thing' crowded out Sixties eclecticism in Wicca, and from the mid-80s, countercultural Druidry became an addition to the Neopagan roster of major genres, particularly in England. Heathenism, despite being tainted as neo-Nazi, and a victim of the 'Celtic-good/Germanic-bad' prejudice, gradually became a major genre.
But whether labeled Neopagan or not, and if so, 'Neo-shamanist', my sense is that, however you classify, interest in Native American religion and spirituality continues, and its appeal is often as a model of ecological virtue. But can a non-native identify as an Indian? Not readily, I think, and that limits its appeal, and its potential for Neopagan development ('neocolonialist cultural appropriation and syncretizing of...'). Which is good and bad at once. There's also the problem that nothing like the traditional Indian way of life can be approached in this hi-tech computerized world we inhabit-- it's a problem for Native Americans as well. Their essentially Stone Age cultures were too different in their material basis and way of life for us to hope to be able to acquire their consciousness, however much we might want to. And for non-natives, Europic or not, when your ancestors came from other continents, how can you reconcile the two culture-worlds? As a Neopagan, I have found this problem ultimately unsurmountable-- my ancestry and acculturation is European, and I find it hard to feel really at home in North America. Instead, I feel unrooted. If there were any way to comfortably meld, say, Celtic/Germanic gods and wights with Native American ones, I might be able to feel more grounded here. But I haven't been able to manage that degree of eclecticism, and at best, as in the Shaggy Mythos, I must be European-based but try to remain universally-applicable, and I have drawn on lore from Asian traditions, of India and China. There's also the problem of moving away from one's birthplace and camping serially in far-flung cities, and of the sense of 'homeland' being destroyed for one by the devastations done to one's early home-place by development and destruction of the landscape. And, too, with no 'people' to belong to-- no tribe-- well, I guess almost all of us feel unrooted anywhere.
I'm not sure. There was much interest in 'American Indians' in the Sixties Counterculture years. Black Elk Speaks, if it wasn't readily available earlier, was rereleased as a paperback in 1972, and that book disseminated Lakota spirituality like nothing else around, I think. I was greatly affected by the accounts of Black Elk's visions. The amazing Seven Arrows by Hyemeyohsts Storm was published in 1972 as well, though I only discovered that much later. Vine Deloria Jr's God Is Red came out the next year. And no doubt there were other powerful presentations of Indian spirituality I missed or can't recall. There was also Carlos Castenada's Don Juan books, the first three of which came out in 1968, 1971, and 1972. These were something different, about sorcery rather than religion, and were categorized as 'shamanism', which was already known through Mircea Eliade's Shamanism. I read one of the Don Juan books at the time and was frightened by the melding of drug-induced hallucination and reality as described in harrowing scenes of confusion and supernatural menace. About the same time, I read about 'lucid dreaming' and had the same response--'No way do I want to go there!' There were also then creepy UFO-aliens books featuring abductions, sinister 'men in black', black helicopters, and other expressions of the black paranoia of the Seventies. Hypnotic regression tape-transcripts of the 'contactees' frightend me as much as the Don Juan accounts, though I withheld judgment on their veracity and was very leery of the UFO books after The Mothman Prophecies. Then I read articles sceptical of Castaneda's accounts . In both cases, I was not drawn to the dark weirdness-- I was by that time seeking spiritual sanctuary in the aftermath of the waning of the Counterculture. For me, Christianity was out, though many turned back to it in the Seventies. The pure spirituality of romantic moonlight through a cathedral's stained glass windows, etc. (Christmas card Christianity), still had appeal, but I was more drawn toward Buddhism and would have become a Buddhist, despite its grim cosmology, if I could have believed in karma and reincarnation. But I am not a 'believer'.
As for Native American spirituality, I don't think it attracted the kind of people drawn to Wicca, but it drew a good number of hippie-type American youth. In the Seventies, there were a number of top-40 songs about Indians, mostly as victims. The American Indian Movement made Indian grievances widely known. Liberals had developed a sensitivity to 'ethnic minorities' like 'Blacks' and Indians-- which may be why, outside the 'do what you will' Counterculture, it was considered bad form to dress-up like an Indian. But especially out West, hip youth might wear turquoise-and-silver jewelry, moccassins (or desert boots), headbands, or a kind of 'Indian look', as did working-men, businessmen, and retirees. Some of the young males were really 'into' Indianness. The peyote-partaking Native American Church was talked about among white hippies, was confused with the white jokester Neo-American Church, which was for partaking drugs-in-general. And the Don Juan books were widely read among serious psychedelicists. But apart from Sun Bear's Bear Tribe that was open to whites-- and he soon learned that hippie types were too self-indulgent and wayward to be other than a drag on the community-- I don't know of whites forming Indian spirituality groups comparable to witchcraft covens. So 'Neo-paganism', as that term became current, seemed to be more about witchcraft and similar magic-and-spitiuality groups. But I knew nothing about all this until the late 70s/early 80s. The New Age movement quickly outgrew these underground expressions with popular-oriented books and therapies and organizations with mystical/metaphysical human potential movement/self-help/pseudoscience formulas. As Native American attacks on white 'cultural appropriation' of their religions penetrated to the non-native world, white liberal sensibilities and solidarity would have inhibited the formation of 'white Indian' groups. But whether they would have formed otherwise, I don't know. Maybe some did. But Neopaganism in the Seventies was mostly in the vein of the European occult/romantic traditions. Since then, interest in 'primitive' peoples like Australian aborigines and pan-American indigenous peoples has grown in Neopaganism, with Native Americans as a sub-genre. In the Sixties, Hindu religion and Zen Buddhism and meditation had become popular, and since then, Tibetan Buddhism has become, too (though Buddhism is hardly Pagan, despite pagan elements in the Tibetan form). The 'Celtic thing' crowded out Sixties eclecticism in Wicca, and from the mid-80s, countercultural Druidry became an addition to the Neopagan roster of major genres, particularly in England. Heathenism, despite being tainted as neo-Nazi, and a victim of the 'Celtic-good/Germanic-bad' prejudice, gradually became a major genre.
But whether labeled Neopagan or not, and if so, 'Neo-shamanist', my sense is that, however you classify, interest in Native American religion and spirituality continues, and its appeal is often as a model of ecological virtue. But can a non-native identify as an Indian? Not readily, I think, and that limits its appeal, and its potential for Neopagan development ('neocolonialist cultural appropriation and syncretizing of...'). Which is good and bad at once. There's also the problem that nothing like the traditional Indian way of life can be approached in this hi-tech computerized world we inhabit-- it's a problem for Native Americans as well. Their essentially Stone Age cultures were too different in their material basis and way of life for us to hope to be able to acquire their consciousness, however much we might want to. And for non-natives, Europic or not, when your ancestors came from other continents, how can you reconcile the two culture-worlds? As a Neopagan, I have found this problem ultimately unsurmountable-- my ancestry and acculturation is European, and I find it hard to feel really at home in North America. Instead, I feel unrooted. If there were any way to comfortably meld, say, Celtic/Germanic gods and wights with Native American ones, I might be able to feel more grounded here. But I haven't been able to manage that degree of eclecticism, and at best, as in the Shaggy Mythos, I must be European-based but try to remain universally-applicable, and I have drawn on lore from Asian traditions, of India and China. There's also the problem of moving away from one's birthplace and camping serially in far-flung cities, and of the sense of 'homeland' being destroyed for one by the devastations done to one's early home-place by development and destruction of the landscape. And, too, with no 'people' to belong to-- no tribe-- well, I guess almost all of us feel unrooted anywhere.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Neorxna
I love the sound of this word-- neh-orks'-nah. It's from Old English Neorxnawang (pronounced wong), which means Paradise, Elysian Fields. The only possibly related words I have found are ancient Greek neorgos= freshening, invigorating, and Old Norse noerast= to assume fresh vigor, recover, rally, which fit pretty well with Elysian Fields, I think. Noerast derives from noera= to nourish, invigorate. Other possible relatives-- Old English nerian= to save, preserve, protect, rescue; nergend= savior, protector (referring to Christ and God in the sources); and Middle High German nern= to rescue.
In the Shaggy Mythos (Sagenverden), I have used neorxna in Neorxnaweg (the Greening Way)-- the way of life of, the struggle toward, a steady-state ecological civilization, the Edhli-menning, and have also named Neorxna the Newolden Child, the neophyte with an old soul who is the herald and ambassador of the New World of the future.
In the Shaggy Mythos (Sagenverden), I have used neorxna in Neorxnaweg (the Greening Way)-- the way of life of, the struggle toward, a steady-state ecological civilization, the Edhli-menning, and have also named Neorxna the Newolden Child, the neophyte with an old soul who is the herald and ambassador of the New World of the future.
Monday, January 31, 2011
In Search of Ecopaganism 5
...the Sixties happened! For me, the Sixties began with the Coming of the Beatles in early 1964. But 1962 was the year of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, and 1963 was the year Kennedy was assassinated, but pick your own heralds of the new zeitgeist. I would date 'the Sixties' as a countercultural era as roughly from the early 1960s into the early 1970s.
I can't remember much specifically about Indians from the actual 1960s, though, apart from the kind of TV shows and movies I have described. But notable in my 60s spiritual chronology was when I closed the door on Christianity when I was 12 or 13. I had doubts about what I was being told in Sunday-school and I more or less read the whole Bible to try to see if I could believe. But the whole book shocked and revulsed me, and I had an unpleasant waking dream of grim Jehovah up in the sky. That was it. Then I discovered the Romance of Eastern spirituality in Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi, and was carried away. When the paperbacks of The Lord of the Rings came out mid-60s, I found a literary realm in which my feeling for Nature was reflected. I tried to live in Middle Earth. There was a strong environmentalist element in the story, though not really ecological, unfortunately, but as Margot Adler points out, 'ecology' was unknown until Earth Day 1970. But as with Hindu mysticism, I was once again awakened and sent off in a new direction.
After Silent Spring had come out and awakened the world to the environmental threat to Nature, there was more and more in the news about 'the environment' being polluted and destroyed, and a series of environmental books by Paul Ehrlich, Barry Commoner, David Brower, Rene Dubos, William O. Douglas, and others came out over the decade, seeking to turn the tide against destruction. In this, American Indians figured as an example of a people who lived without harm to Nature before the White Man came and ruined it all. Everyone alive then should remember the famous 'crying Indian commercial', in which a mature Indian in a canoe looks on at different scenes of industrial defacement and pollution and public littering, and at the end, we see a tear rolling down his face. It was very moving, and an amazingly effective graphic means of waking people up to what we were doing, exploiting that well-worn image of the Indian as the Noble Redskin. But by that time, I had graduated from J. R. R. Tolkien to D. H. Lawrence, who featured Indians in some of his works, but it was mainly the Nature-mysticism that affected me, and the 'blood-consciousness' of his characters. He had been affected by the Indians and their landscape at Taos, New Mexico, but as far as I can tell, he got his ideology from the German counterculture at first or second-hand.
When I hit college in the fall of 1969, I started reading about American history as it concerned attitudes toward and treatment of Nature, and learned much about the Indians, as well as about Thoreau and John Muir and other Nature-mystic/prophets. The first Earth Day came the next spring, and I was told about it by a biology major, and attended the ceremony out near the middle of campus where the flagpole was, but there wasn't a big turn-out, probably because there was so much anti-war turmoil going on at the time, and it seemed that most of the people there were from the Biology department (it figures). There were statements made, but it wasn't a big, showy spectacle. I can't now remember the event very well-- was the new ecology flag raised up the flagpole? I was, as usual, an observer rather than a participant-- I never got a buzz being in a crowd or attending a ceremony, and Earth Day didn't strike me then as a major event, even though I was very 'environmentally concerned'. There was so much else going on-- it was a mad scene, and I was confused and freaked-out by it all. But as it turned out, Earth Day was a major event.
I think it was after this, maybe the next year, that 'the Indian' finally appeared. A bus-caravan of American Indians arrived on campus calling themselves The White Roots of Peace. Margot Adler mentions them in Drawing Down the Moon, saying that they toured from northern Canada to southern Florida. Once again, my memory is foggy, but what most impressed me was the older Indian man, in the traditional get-up, who reminded me of the 'medicine man' I had seen on TV shows and in movies, and of the 'Crying Indian', and I was greatly affected by his message of peace among men and with Nature, as well as astounded by all the young Indians with him. I had actually never seen a real, live Indian before*, this being the East, and it was like seeing Robin Hood or King Arthur stepping out of the world of legend into the real world. Once again, I was very shy and bystanding, but then I dropped by the room of the girl who had urged me to attend the Earth Day observance, and she gushed at me, "I'm in love!" Soon there appeared a young Indian in his get-up, not very tall, but well-set-up and very attractive, with hair like a black, shining pelt. Really, the most striking human figure I had yet seen in my life ('the gods walk among us'). Of course, I was socially paralyzed in his presence, but it was enough to have encountered him. And for a while, the effect of the White Roots of Peace lingered like an afterglow, but with so much late-60s turmoil going on, without and within, it, too, faded.
*No, that's not true-- as a kid, I went to a classmate's house after school, and his mother was Indian and was making fried eggplant which she said was an Indian dish, and she gave me some to eat. But I never went back there, being the autistic type, clueless and passive about social relations, totally inept at friendship.
I can't remember much specifically about Indians from the actual 1960s, though, apart from the kind of TV shows and movies I have described. But notable in my 60s spiritual chronology was when I closed the door on Christianity when I was 12 or 13. I had doubts about what I was being told in Sunday-school and I more or less read the whole Bible to try to see if I could believe. But the whole book shocked and revulsed me, and I had an unpleasant waking dream of grim Jehovah up in the sky. That was it. Then I discovered the Romance of Eastern spirituality in Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi, and was carried away. When the paperbacks of The Lord of the Rings came out mid-60s, I found a literary realm in which my feeling for Nature was reflected. I tried to live in Middle Earth. There was a strong environmentalist element in the story, though not really ecological, unfortunately, but as Margot Adler points out, 'ecology' was unknown until Earth Day 1970. But as with Hindu mysticism, I was once again awakened and sent off in a new direction.
After Silent Spring had come out and awakened the world to the environmental threat to Nature, there was more and more in the news about 'the environment' being polluted and destroyed, and a series of environmental books by Paul Ehrlich, Barry Commoner, David Brower, Rene Dubos, William O. Douglas, and others came out over the decade, seeking to turn the tide against destruction. In this, American Indians figured as an example of a people who lived without harm to Nature before the White Man came and ruined it all. Everyone alive then should remember the famous 'crying Indian commercial', in which a mature Indian in a canoe looks on at different scenes of industrial defacement and pollution and public littering, and at the end, we see a tear rolling down his face. It was very moving, and an amazingly effective graphic means of waking people up to what we were doing, exploiting that well-worn image of the Indian as the Noble Redskin. But by that time, I had graduated from J. R. R. Tolkien to D. H. Lawrence, who featured Indians in some of his works, but it was mainly the Nature-mysticism that affected me, and the 'blood-consciousness' of his characters. He had been affected by the Indians and their landscape at Taos, New Mexico, but as far as I can tell, he got his ideology from the German counterculture at first or second-hand.
When I hit college in the fall of 1969, I started reading about American history as it concerned attitudes toward and treatment of Nature, and learned much about the Indians, as well as about Thoreau and John Muir and other Nature-mystic/prophets. The first Earth Day came the next spring, and I was told about it by a biology major, and attended the ceremony out near the middle of campus where the flagpole was, but there wasn't a big turn-out, probably because there was so much anti-war turmoil going on at the time, and it seemed that most of the people there were from the Biology department (it figures). There were statements made, but it wasn't a big, showy spectacle. I can't now remember the event very well-- was the new ecology flag raised up the flagpole? I was, as usual, an observer rather than a participant-- I never got a buzz being in a crowd or attending a ceremony, and Earth Day didn't strike me then as a major event, even though I was very 'environmentally concerned'. There was so much else going on-- it was a mad scene, and I was confused and freaked-out by it all. But as it turned out, Earth Day was a major event.
I think it was after this, maybe the next year, that 'the Indian' finally appeared. A bus-caravan of American Indians arrived on campus calling themselves The White Roots of Peace. Margot Adler mentions them in Drawing Down the Moon, saying that they toured from northern Canada to southern Florida. Once again, my memory is foggy, but what most impressed me was the older Indian man, in the traditional get-up, who reminded me of the 'medicine man' I had seen on TV shows and in movies, and of the 'Crying Indian', and I was greatly affected by his message of peace among men and with Nature, as well as astounded by all the young Indians with him. I had actually never seen a real, live Indian before*, this being the East, and it was like seeing Robin Hood or King Arthur stepping out of the world of legend into the real world. Once again, I was very shy and bystanding, but then I dropped by the room of the girl who had urged me to attend the Earth Day observance, and she gushed at me, "I'm in love!" Soon there appeared a young Indian in his get-up, not very tall, but well-set-up and very attractive, with hair like a black, shining pelt. Really, the most striking human figure I had yet seen in my life ('the gods walk among us'). Of course, I was socially paralyzed in his presence, but it was enough to have encountered him. And for a while, the effect of the White Roots of Peace lingered like an afterglow, but with so much late-60s turmoil going on, without and within, it, too, faded.
*No, that's not true-- as a kid, I went to a classmate's house after school, and his mother was Indian and was making fried eggplant which she said was an Indian dish, and she gave me some to eat. But I never went back there, being the autistic type, clueless and passive about social relations, totally inept at friendship.
Monday, January 24, 2011
In Search of Ecopaganism 4
This is about early influences that shaped my image of 'the Noble Redskin'. We're all formed by early influences, though our responses to our physical/cultural environment is selective, idiosyncratic. I am of the post-WWII Baby Boom generation, the first TV generation. As a tot, I would sit entranced before the Tube (literally in-tranced), fascinated by the gray-toned imagery made up of dancing dots, oblivious to its sense. McLuhan may have been right--'the medium is the message (massage)'. TV was futurist ghost-world, made by the god behind the machine, a coercive stream of alien scenes and sounds you're helpless to field, so you trance-out. Fortunately, that strategy worked-- my fragile psyche was not overwhelmed, but it was insidiously, relentlessly programmed in ways I still can't entirely grasp. We're all programmed, early on, and there's not a lot we can do about it-- it's become 'us'. All we can do is try to override the stuff we deem bad or wrong, and will the better.
There was children's literature as well. The more affecting of it was in fairy tales, which had some numinosity about them, were meant to enchant. Do mothers know what they're doing to their child's soul, reading them these stories as they grow drowsy? And television did much the same, in similar relaxed conditions. Well, children want magic, wonder, adventure, marvelous places, amazing persons, more than reality could ever provide. This sets us up to be cruelly disappointed by reality contrasting with our programmed shining ideals and yearnings that won't go away.
Of the amazing persons I can recall, it was televised versions of Robin Hood, Zorro, Davy Crockett, and Superman that had the strongest effect early on. Robin Hood as played by Richard Greene and Davy Crockett by Fess Parker have endured as icons in my psyche. Both were heroic men of the forest-- one in medieval England, the other in frontier America, which might have something to do with the counter-pulls of English and American cultures I've always experienced. There were Indians in Disney's Davy Crockett episodes, and in other Disney serials, on the Mickey Mouse Club and the Disney Show. In the 1950s and into the 60s, westerns were everywhere in profusion, on evening television, in movies. Back then, we were closer to the 'heroic' era, and in literature, mostly pulp, and from the earliest movies, the western had been a major genre. As a kid watching TV, I saw a lot of back-lot frontier towns and California desert and hills. I never liked desert, but the rugged forested hills and mountains made a romantic imprint. Fortunately, our apartment development was surrounded by woods, cliffs, a meadow with stream, that I'm now grateful I had as an early influence, to complement that of Nature on TV!
Particularly affecting fare was Sgt. Preston of the Yukon and The Lone Ranger, both of which had Indians, with Tonto as the Lone Ranger's 'faithful sidekick' probably then the most salient Indian in the world reached by American television. Tonto, as played by Jay Silverheels, was dignified, intelligent-- though laconic, with Basic English only-- sort of a wooden, cigar-store Indian stereotype. But he was part of a heroic duo, though secondary. We had after-school B-movies on TV, some of which were westerns, some of the cowboys-and-Indians sort. There was also, for kids, Rin Tin Tin (a German shepherd) at Fort Apache, which was a stockaded fortress against savage Indians. So there was that stereotype, but over my early years, there were many positive presentations of Indians as noble, dignified, intelligent, and wise. 'Squaws' were invariably demure, modestly dressed, respectable helpmeets, but that was how respectable 'white' frontier women were presented, too-- it was the 50s' conservative ideal of womanhood. There was also the wise old Medicine Man-- always presented respectfully. I suppose he was my first acquaintance with that archetype-- Merlin came much later. The Indian regalia-- peace pipe, eagle feathers, headdresses down to there, fringed buckskin clothing with leggings and loincloths and armbands and headbands, painted shields, bows and arrows (like Robin Hood!), teepees, canoes, cayuses (horses)-- all of that, and the natural settings, were deeply imprinted on me. At the time, there was nothing else so romantically affecting, apart from fairy stories, which induced powerful romantic dream-states, but this was filmed, and shown on television!
As a kid, I of course had no way to separate this Hollywood fantasy from reality-- I didn't know the reality! It wasn't until later (covered in next shtook) that I began learning of the terrible things done by the White Man to the Indians. Even in school, we got mostly the Thanksgiving story and Pocahontas saving John Smith from having his head bashed-in with a war-club by appealing to her father, the stern chief Powhatan. And there was plenty about Indian attacks, kidnappings, disappearances (Roanoke Colony, for one).
But despite a glut of depictions of Indians as ruthless, relentless evil-doers, renegades, we didn't get the drunken, stupid Indian stereotype. And there was much that was valorizing, increasingly so-- but that had been around since the silent-movie era. We saw it all on B-movies, mostly from the 1940s, I think.
As for Indian religion, we got the wise elder on the cliff-top communing with, appealing to, the Great Spirit in the sky, with peace pipe, perhaps. Not incompatible with Christianity, as far as it went, and the only alternative to it available at the time, on TV-- that's important.
I never liked violence, except as sheer action, and so the western-town saloon brawling and gunfights out on the main street didn't appeal to me, nor the ferocious Indian attacks on innocent settlers, with valiant cavalry vanquishing them in the end. It was the numinous, romantic feelings of wilderness and the native inhabitants of it that made the deepest impression-- it meant something-- something good-- in a time, as I saw later, of rocket-like blasting into a shining modern Future (or maybe not), while we strove to free ourselves of the terrible Evil that afflicted the world (the Nazis, the Commies, the Nukes). Then something happened...
There was children's literature as well. The more affecting of it was in fairy tales, which had some numinosity about them, were meant to enchant. Do mothers know what they're doing to their child's soul, reading them these stories as they grow drowsy? And television did much the same, in similar relaxed conditions. Well, children want magic, wonder, adventure, marvelous places, amazing persons, more than reality could ever provide. This sets us up to be cruelly disappointed by reality contrasting with our programmed shining ideals and yearnings that won't go away.
Of the amazing persons I can recall, it was televised versions of Robin Hood, Zorro, Davy Crockett, and Superman that had the strongest effect early on. Robin Hood as played by Richard Greene and Davy Crockett by Fess Parker have endured as icons in my psyche. Both were heroic men of the forest-- one in medieval England, the other in frontier America, which might have something to do with the counter-pulls of English and American cultures I've always experienced. There were Indians in Disney's Davy Crockett episodes, and in other Disney serials, on the Mickey Mouse Club and the Disney Show. In the 1950s and into the 60s, westerns were everywhere in profusion, on evening television, in movies. Back then, we were closer to the 'heroic' era, and in literature, mostly pulp, and from the earliest movies, the western had been a major genre. As a kid watching TV, I saw a lot of back-lot frontier towns and California desert and hills. I never liked desert, but the rugged forested hills and mountains made a romantic imprint. Fortunately, our apartment development was surrounded by woods, cliffs, a meadow with stream, that I'm now grateful I had as an early influence, to complement that of Nature on TV!
Particularly affecting fare was Sgt. Preston of the Yukon and The Lone Ranger, both of which had Indians, with Tonto as the Lone Ranger's 'faithful sidekick' probably then the most salient Indian in the world reached by American television. Tonto, as played by Jay Silverheels, was dignified, intelligent-- though laconic, with Basic English only-- sort of a wooden, cigar-store Indian stereotype. But he was part of a heroic duo, though secondary. We had after-school B-movies on TV, some of which were westerns, some of the cowboys-and-Indians sort. There was also, for kids, Rin Tin Tin (a German shepherd) at Fort Apache, which was a stockaded fortress against savage Indians. So there was that stereotype, but over my early years, there were many positive presentations of Indians as noble, dignified, intelligent, and wise. 'Squaws' were invariably demure, modestly dressed, respectable helpmeets, but that was how respectable 'white' frontier women were presented, too-- it was the 50s' conservative ideal of womanhood. There was also the wise old Medicine Man-- always presented respectfully. I suppose he was my first acquaintance with that archetype-- Merlin came much later. The Indian regalia-- peace pipe, eagle feathers, headdresses down to there, fringed buckskin clothing with leggings and loincloths and armbands and headbands, painted shields, bows and arrows (like Robin Hood!), teepees, canoes, cayuses (horses)-- all of that, and the natural settings, were deeply imprinted on me. At the time, there was nothing else so romantically affecting, apart from fairy stories, which induced powerful romantic dream-states, but this was filmed, and shown on television!
As a kid, I of course had no way to separate this Hollywood fantasy from reality-- I didn't know the reality! It wasn't until later (covered in next shtook) that I began learning of the terrible things done by the White Man to the Indians. Even in school, we got mostly the Thanksgiving story and Pocahontas saving John Smith from having his head bashed-in with a war-club by appealing to her father, the stern chief Powhatan. And there was plenty about Indian attacks, kidnappings, disappearances (Roanoke Colony, for one).
But despite a glut of depictions of Indians as ruthless, relentless evil-doers, renegades, we didn't get the drunken, stupid Indian stereotype. And there was much that was valorizing, increasingly so-- but that had been around since the silent-movie era. We saw it all on B-movies, mostly from the 1940s, I think.
As for Indian religion, we got the wise elder on the cliff-top communing with, appealing to, the Great Spirit in the sky, with peace pipe, perhaps. Not incompatible with Christianity, as far as it went, and the only alternative to it available at the time, on TV-- that's important.
I never liked violence, except as sheer action, and so the western-town saloon brawling and gunfights out on the main street didn't appeal to me, nor the ferocious Indian attacks on innocent settlers, with valiant cavalry vanquishing them in the end. It was the numinous, romantic feelings of wilderness and the native inhabitants of it that made the deepest impression-- it meant something-- something good-- in a time, as I saw later, of rocket-like blasting into a shining modern Future (or maybe not), while we strove to free ourselves of the terrible Evil that afflicted the world (the Nazis, the Commies, the Nukes). Then something happened...
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
The Celtic Horned or Ram-headed Snake Was Really a Slug or Snail ?
I always wondered where this Celtic creature came from. It's mainly known from the Gundestrup cauldron, associated with what may be Cernunnos, the Horned God. Is it related to the germanic 'wyrm'?-- a large serpent or dragon without wings, as I've read the old Celtic dragon was. A few things I've come across lately gave me the idea that the horned/ram-headed snake was actually a slug or snail, at least originally. First, the Celtic snake is associated with healing springs and wells. But springs and wells are where slugs and snails are found because of the moisture and slimy growth to feed on. As for snakes, I don't know if they hang out around them. Slugs do look rather snake-like.* And slugs/snails sometimes have eye-stalks, if that's what they are, that look like horns. Also, there's a Celtic charm called a 'snake stone' which is an ammonite-shell fossil-- a snail shell-- but it is said to resemble a coiled-up snake, which gives it its efficacy-- snakes being magical. It's an odd juxtaposition of snake and snail, but does that imply anything more? Where the ram's head comes in could be the snail shell, which resembles a ram's coiled horns. A snail's shell might also be seen as an opening from the Otherworld-- which is why the Celtic spiral (actually pre-Celtic) was used so much? (or it's a coiled-up snake!).
Well, this is all speculation, but it makes you wonder how far back might this creature go. Is it pan-Indo-European? The Hindu snake is also associated with water and wells. As the Naga, a demon-god, it might even be the original of the Chinese dragon, which is water-loving. The Vedic demon-god Vritra was a hoarder of water. Forms of the Scandinavian wyrm were associated with water, too. The horned/ram-headed snake could even be pre-Indo-European/pan-Eurasian. It's a shame we don't know more about it. We can always improvise, though!
* It's possible that in ancient times, snakes, snails, and slugs were grouped together. In germanic languages, snake and snail are related etymologically-- snail being a diminutive of snake, says one etymological dictionary, at least in Old English. Slug is not related, though. In Irish, snail is snag-- rather like snake. But the word for snake is nathair-- oh well. In Welsh the two words are not etymologically related. Snake derives from Indo-European *(s)neg-os (= to creep), as probably does Sanscrit Nagas.
Well, this is all speculation, but it makes you wonder how far back might this creature go. Is it pan-Indo-European? The Hindu snake is also associated with water and wells. As the Naga, a demon-god, it might even be the original of the Chinese dragon, which is water-loving. The Vedic demon-god Vritra was a hoarder of water. Forms of the Scandinavian wyrm were associated with water, too. The horned/ram-headed snake could even be pre-Indo-European/pan-Eurasian. It's a shame we don't know more about it. We can always improvise, though!
* It's possible that in ancient times, snakes, snails, and slugs were grouped together. In germanic languages, snake and snail are related etymologically-- snail being a diminutive of snake, says one etymological dictionary, at least in Old English. Slug is not related, though. In Irish, snail is snag-- rather like snake. But the word for snake is nathair-- oh well. In Welsh the two words are not etymologically related. Snake derives from Indo-European *(s)neg-os (= to creep), as probably does Sanscrit Nagas.
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