Paganism | Contemplative Inquiry

December 12, 2022

PAGANISM IN ROMAN BRITAIN

This post concerns Ronald Hutton’s Gresham College lecture about Paganism in Roman Britain (1). In it, he summarises our current academic knowledge, and asks: how Romanised was British religion within the Roman Empire? It proves to be a hard question to answer, for three main reasons.

The first is that we know little about British religion immediately before the occupation, apart from the fact that Druids had a leading role in at least some religious activity.

The second is that, although the Romans generally honoured local gods and their worshippers, they made an exception for war gods and religious communities hostile to Roman rule. British Druids belonged to the latter category, so any ongoing British Druid activity is off the record. The Druids were in any case averse to written records about their calling.

The third is that we know the names of only a few people from this period, so get only occasional glimpses of individuals and their practices. Britons of any social standing tended to adopt Roman names, at least for the written record, but the records are too sparse to distinguish between the developing cultures of Romanised Britons and localised Romans. All we have is the Roman names. People who made do without Roman names go unrecorded.

These three limitations mean that we have limited knowledge, and that this knowledge is heavily tilted towards Roman practices and understandings. We do however have the names of a number of indigenous deities from the Roman period, and some understanding of their roles. According to Hutton, such deities tended to be highly localised, and connected to specific activities – like Coventina looking after the sacred spring at Carrowburgh not far from Hadrian’s wall. On the whole Goddesses were linked to the land, hills, rivers, springs and wells. Gods were concerned with war, protection, trade and travel.

Other gods were imported during the centuries of occupation. Continental Celtic culture brought Rosmerta, the Matres and Epona. Widely acknowledged Roman gods included Jupiter, Mars, Silvanus and Mercury. Other parts of the empire contributed Apollo, Bacchus, Mithras, Cybele and Athys, Isis and Serapis.

Hutton finds in both Romans and Celts a very different attitude to deity from that of the later arriving Christian faith. Pagan Gods asked for acknowledgement and respect. Beyond that they were not greatly interested in us. They did not make laws, issue commands or monitor our performance. The Latin word superstitio referred to excessive fear of the divine. Hutton characterises mainstream Roman British religion as largely transactional. Roman priesthood was a job for the local magistrates.

Hence, according to Hutton, there was no theology. If you wanted the gods’ help, and had the support and resources, you built shrines, enacted rituals and offered sacrifice. (Animal sacrifice was required to be swift and painless, or it did not please the gods.) If you looked for a deeper or more intense religious experience, and were deemed eligible, you sought initiation into a mystery school. If you were concerned with speculation about the cosmos and our place in it, or wanted a set of values and practices to live by, you turned to philosophy. The one religious demand made by the state was a public reverencing of the Emperor’s numen (the divine power within him) which the early Christians, other than Gnostics, risked martyrdom rather than acknowledge.

The lecture includes a discussion of hybridised (or ‘twinned’) deities and the high esteem in which they could be held – Sulis Minerva at Aquae Sulis (Bath), Apollo Maponus (with a major shrine a little beyond Hadrian’s Wall at Lochmaben) and Mars (or possibly Mercury) Nodens, at Lydney, close to the River Severn in the Forest of Dean.

Hutton ends with a rare opportunity to acknowledge a real, named person, Magnius. He is known to have been a Briton, a commoner with some resources. He had a tomb erected at Aquae Sulis for his daughter, who had died aged only eighteen months. A tomb for one so young was very rare, and the poignancy of this act reaches across the centuries to us, connecting humans who, from very different times and cultures, are united by the same capacity to love and to grieve. I found this a good note on which to end a lecture which provides some insight into a subject where much will always be unknown.

(1) https://www.gresham.ac.uk/ (Go to browse by series then lecture series 2022-23 then Finding Britain’s Lost Gods. The specific lecture is Paganism in Roman Britain.)

Ronald Hutton is Professor of History at the University of Bristol, a specialist in Pagan and Druid studies, and enjoys a very high reputation within both the academic and Pagan communities.

5 Comments

December 1, 2022

ACCEPTING THE ARRIVAL OF WINTER

It was 26 November 2022, 11 a.m. I was at the Gloucester end of the Gloucester-Sharpness canal. I found myself accepting the arrival of winter. I was observing three cygnets, now without their parents but still keeping company with each other. The underlying temperature was around 7 C (44.6 F) and good for walking, But I was feeling the pinch of a cold wind. In memory I am feeling it now. The water and sky looked grey. The trees were starting to feel skeletal, whilst still retaining some leaves. My lingering sense of autumn had finally drained away.

To accept winter’s arrival in the presence of swans felt numinous. Swans are otherworldly birds in Celtic tradition. The three together, not yet in their full adult plumage, seemed auspicious. They suggested coming opportunities for creativity, love and celebration. Winter can be a preparation for renewal, both as season and as state of mind. My acceptance goes with a faith in winter’s regenerative darkness, and the riches this can bring.

8 Comments

November 28, 2022

BOOK REVIEW: THE CIRCLE OF LIFE IS BROKEN

Highly recommended. Brendan Myers’ The Circle of Life is Broken (1) is subtitled “an eco-spiritual philosophy of the climate crisis”. Myers is a Pagan identified author and a professional philosopher who teaches at Heritage College, Gatineau, Quebec. His Paganism is naturalistically oriented, and animist in a sense that “the things of the natural world are in some hard-to-express manner alive and spiritually present”.

The book begins with an view of the Earth from outside, through the loving eyes and words of astronauts. “It is as if the Earth as a whole was only discovered in 1968, when Apollo-8 astronaut William Anders shot the famous Earthrise photograph; the image of the Earth coming out from behind the edge of the moon”. This ‘overview effect’ is balanced at the end of the book by an invitation to immerse ourselves more fully and awarely within the world, through the practices of a weekly green sabbatical and an annual ecological pilgrimage.

Between this beginning and ending there are three main sections, each addressing a ‘root question’. Each question is rigorously explored, before receiving a carefully formulated answer.

The first question asks: what is the circle of life? A key understanding is that ecologists today do not see the Earth as “an aggregate of individuals competing for resources and survival”. Rather, they “are teaching us to see the Earth as a complex system in which everything is directly or indirectly involved in all the life around it, and in which symbiosis and cooperation, across multiple levels, keep the system as a whole flourishing”. This is the circle of life that is now breaking down. “It isn’t simply changing form. It is also short-circuiting; it is falling apart”.

The second root question asks: who faces the circle of life? This concerns humans and how we deal with realities of a higher order than our own. The exploration includes a look at how people see the world at different life stages. Myers wants to know “what becomes of the human reality when cast in terms of the encounter with the Circle of Life as the ultimate reality?” He notes that the Circle goes almost unmentioned in the history of Western philosophy, and also explores a perceived a tension between our ‘being-ecological’ and our ‘being-free’.

The third root question asks: can the circle be healed? Myers quotes a saying of the philosopher Hegel: “the owl of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering”. When things are bad, new ideas and possibilities can emerge and philosophers especially are challenged to think big. Myers looks at the political and cultural obstacles to any healing process, with good sections on ‘eco-fascism’ and the ‘gatekeepers of human nature’. He also makes a number of specific positive proposals.

Although written in plain English as far as possible, The Circle is Broken is not a book to read in one sitting. Myers’ thinking is holistic, with room for scientific information, complex argument, deep feeling, contemplation and engagement. It is written with love and a sense of wonder, generously drawing on personal experience. I think of it as a long-term companion, a gift to anyone concerned with the climate crisis and creative responses to it.

(1) Brendan Myers The Circle of Life is Broken: An Eco-Spiritual Philosophy of the Climate Crisis Winchester UK & Washington USA: Moon Books 2022 (Earth Spirit series)

(2) For other posts about Brendan Myers’ work, see:

https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2015/05/22/the-worship-of-the-gods-is-not-what-matters/ (Reblog from Naturalistic Paganism)

BOOK REVIEW: THE EARTH, THE GODS AND THE SOUL

BOOK REVIEW: RECLAIMING CIVILIZATION

ETHICS AND ‘CIVILIZATION’

BRENDAN MYERS: A FOREST ENCOUNTER

4 Comments

November 25, 2022

BRENDAN MYERS: A FOREST ENCOUNTER

“Over the last twelve years I have walked every trail, every hillcrest, every stream-edge within a two hour walking radius of my house: everything between Lac-Des-Fees and Pink Lake, and a little beyond. …. I still encounter things I never saw before. Last year I saw a Great Horned Owl in the park for the first time. Its swift yet stately flight above my head caught my eye; a dark shadow in front of the sun, silent, and powerful in its silence.

“It rested on a tree branch not more than twenty meters away, and regarded me. I regarded him in turn. I had known for years that there are owls in the area: I’ve heard their hooting, and seen their pellets on the ground. But until that day and for ten years, I hadn’t seen one here before. Further, and I think more importantly, since I had entered the forest that day for no particular purpose but to enjoy a warm afternoon, to reaffirm my love of for the park’s landmarks and vistas, and to experience a few hours of pure human freedom, in simpler words to play, the encounter with the owl could take on a magical meaning.

“In the light of such magic, what a magnificent animal he was! How proud he seemed, as though in charge of the world, as though I required his permission to take another step. How unpretentious too: this owl had no need to pretend to be something he was not. The size of his claws, the laser-focus of his eyes meeting mine, was proof enough that he was a predator. No need to flex his weapons or brandish them. And what a delightful conversation we might have, if he were to speak. How much he could tell of the places he had seen, the adventures he had while hunting, and the pleasure of flight… Much as I would have loved to stay and hear him speak, I decided to move on after a few minutes. I did not know whether meeting his eyes might be provocative. And much as I might enjoy telling the story of how I got owl-claw scars on my face, I would certainly not enjoy getting them.

“…. Such is the magic of the forest. It can mean what you want it to mean under the aspect of play, yet at the same time it can surprise, and threaten and reveal itself, in ways no human artifact can do. It can suggest a kind of magic no human artifact can adopt: the dramatic discovery of a world not made by human hands. Thus it participates in the play, bringing its own contribution to the emergence of meaning.” (1)

(1) Brendan Myers The Circle of Life is Broken: An Eco-Spiritual Philosophy of the Climate Crisis London UK & Washington USA: Moon Books (Earth Spirit Series)

NOTE: Brendan Myers is a Canadian philosopher and author currently living in Quebec, where he teaches philosophy at Heritage College, Gatineau. He has written extensively on Pagan themes from a philosophical perspective, and his most recent book takes them further through an exploration of the climate crisis. I will review the book in my next post.

3 Comments

October 30, 2022

ON THE CUSP OF SAMHAIN: A NEW MOON

You can just see it, above the buildings, at the last breath of sunset. A sliver of light over murky cloud, the slender crescent of a new moon has appeared. I took the picture just after 6.45 pm on 28 October, still inside British Summer Time. I chose this time on this day because it was not yet dark. The sky is making room for a variety of effects, not just the stark duality of darkness and light. I stand at the cusp of the year’s endarkenment, before the festival of Samhain.

At this time of this year, I find myself tuning in to the lunar cycle as much as the solar one. To me, now, it feels subtler and more nuanced. Anne Baring and Jules Cashford describe its significance in a way I find illuminating:

“The moon was an image in the sky that was always changing yet was always the same. What endured was the cycle, whose totality could never be seen at any one moment. All that was visible was the constant interplay between light and dark, in an ever-recurring sequence. Implicitly, however, the early people must have seen every part of the cycle from the perspective of the whole.

“The individual phases could not be named, nor the relations between them expressed, without assuming the presence of the whole cycle. The whole was invisible, an enduring and unchanging circle, yet it contained the visible phases. Symbolically, it was as if the visible ‘came from’ and ‘returned to’ the invisible – like being born and dying, and being born again.” (1)

When out walking, I noticed that Christmas lights had started to appear. The ones below, at Gloucester Quays, seemed suitable for a new moon. They shifted on and off in a flowing, liquid kind of way, at slightly different times. They did not dazzle or glare or demand my whole attention. They illuminated the space without dominating it. They did not claim that their light was all that mattered.

If I tune in the another cycle, the wheel of the day, I remember how much to thank the sun for. Barely half an hour before I took the pictures above, I experienced the very different colours of the two immediately below. In the first, there is the pink of sunset cloud and some draining of blue from the sky – but, still, a sense of vivid green in the grass. An autumn evening in what is still the light of day.

The second shows a tree-lined street, with full autumn colours, fittingly sundown colours, against a misty looking autumn sky.

It seems that I am saying farewell to one season whilst welcoming another, and that my evening walk on 28 October, partially shared with my wife Elaine, somehow enabled this. There is a starkness and wildness in my last image from that walk, below, which draws me in, despite the remarkable contrast with what has gone before. Just to notice, to fully experience, and make meaning of, the cycles of moon, sun, day, year and life itself gains importance for me year by year, as the wheel turns.

(1) Anne Baring Anne and Jules Cashford The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image London: Penguin, Arkana Books, 1993

2 Comments

October 6, 2022

LEARNING ABOUT OUR PAGAN ANCESTORS, AND LEARNING FROM THEM

Recently I watched Ronald Hutton’s first Gresham College lecture about Gods of Pagan Britain on youtube (1). It sets the scene for a series, raising questions about what we can know about the spiritual lives of our ancestors, what we can fruitfully imagine, and how to tell the difference.

Professor Hutton explores two specific topics. The first is our current archaeological understanding of the Stonehenge monument on Salisbury Plain, England, together with its legendary history and place in the public imagination. The second is the case of the Lindow Man, who was violently killed and thrown into a peat bog in Derbyshire, thus partly preserving his body for conceivably (but probably not) 2,000 years. He has been widely considered, including at times by archaeologists, to be the victim of a Druid sacrifice, though Hutton points out that there are good reasons to question this.

I was drawn to this lecture, both informative and entertaining, by my interest in learning from an ancestral culture without its own texts, as well as about it. This is part of my reason for following a modern Druidry that embraces indigenous themes long pre-dating the Druidry of the Celtic iron age. The people who built Stonehenge in the third millennium BCE bequeathed us the wheel of the year, with its circle and cycles, and its focus on the solstices and equinoxes. We can be inspired by this and honour the ancestors by embedding it in our own lives in ways that suit our time and culture.

For readers who have not yet seen and heard the lecture, I recommend that you take a look at the video.

(1) https://youtube.com/watch?v=QjC0lGr4h04&t=5s/

Ronald Hutton is Professor of History at the University of Bristol, a specialist in Pagan and Druid studies, and enjoys a very high reputation within both the academic and Pagan communities.

3 Comments

September 28, 2022

BEYOND THE EQUINOX: THE PLEASURES OF A LATE SEPTEMBER WALK

Some days seem truly blessed and easy. For me this autumn moment is one of them. I have stumbled across a previously unknown place that radiates the beauty of the season. Woods and river call to me and I respond. I like being where I am, open to the day, free of complications.

I like not knowing what’s round the next corner, whilst enjoying the new spaces I am already in. I notice how small changes of position alter the feeling-tone of place.

There’s little to say, at a time like this. There is the experience and there is the visual record. I hope the images suggest something of my simple delight in being here.

The path below seems to be telling me that there’s always somewhere else to go, but here is where I decide to stop taking pictures. A certain kind of moment is over, and best recognised as such. Nonetheless, I bask in the happiness of connecting with this new and unsuspected space.

3 Comments

September 21, 2022

ALBAN ELFED: A TIME FOR RECEPTIVITY?

Blessings of the season! Where I live, the sun is descending but still has a certain power. We have entered the period of the Autumn Equinox, honoured by modern Druids in the festival of Alban Elfed. Traditionally, the emphasis has been on harvest, but Dana O’Driscoll (1) suggests ‘receptivity’ as a resonant theme, “because with receptivity, rather than cultivating an expectation of what we want and expect to come, we are open to what is and what comes our way”.

She relates her approach to the changes that the world is experiencing now. “It is a counter balance to the effort-reward cultural narrative that is tied to the Fall Equinox and themes of harvest. There is one enormous problem with the effort/reward theme on a larger cultural level. It belongs to a different age. It belongs to the Holocene, an 8,000-11,000 year period of stable climate that allowed humans to develop agriculture, allowed humans to have some predictability about their surroundings, and allowed us to develop symbolic understandings like those drawn upon for the modern wheel of the year. … But we are not in the Holocene any longer, both climate-wise and culturally; we’ve moved on to the Anthropocene … characterized by human-driven planetary changes which destabilize every aspect of our lives.”

I find the call to receptivity challenging. Part of me wants the late Holocene back, in a reformed version – socioeconomically, culturally, technologically. Part of me accepts that it has gone for good but doesn’t want to acknowledge the speed and severity of the transition. Currents of anger, fear and grief cry out for recognition. These are as much part of my life-world as are the climate crisis itself, initiatives for adaptation, and the forces undermining those initiatives. I somehow have to find a receptive space for all of the above, without being overwhelmed.

The good news is that my ‘receptivity’ seems to be sourced by a deep peace at the heart of experience, a peace that grows rather than diminishes with time. In my daily practice as a modern Druid I call for peace in the east, south, west, north, deep earth & underworld [below], and starry heavens [above]. Then I say: “I stand in the peace of the centre, the bubbling source from which I spring, and heart of living presence”. These words are vibrant with life for me however often I declaim them. I experience this deep peace as a fruit of my contemplative inquiry. Perhaps there is a harvest aspect here after all.

Certainly, to stand in such peace empowers my receptivity, linking it to other qualities like reverence, delight and awe. None of this changes the world. But it allows me to contemplate it with an underlying confidence, and to face its challenges in a more resourceful way. I am very happy to mark Alban Elfed as a feast of receptivity.

(1) https://thedruidsgarden.com/ – see Fall Equinox: a Spirit Walk and its internal reference to Equinox on Receptivity

NOTE: Pennsylvania-based Dana O’Driscoll is steeped in Druidry and the US homesteading movement. She is Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America (AODA) and an OBOD Druid. She is a Mount Haemus scholar, lecturing on Channeling the Awen in 1912.

For AODA, see: https://aoda.org/

2 Comments

September 12, 2022

STATES OF LIGHT

This is the face of dawn outside my window, just after 6.30 a.m. I welcome the mid September day, appreciating this moment in the year. I like the infusion of pink into grey clouds, and the suggestion of warmth in the old church tower.

I have now grown used to getting up in the dark, and to beginning my morning practice with an awareness of darkness outside. The nurturing dark and enabling light are both part of my experience. A transient time of balance has begun. It feels numinous to me, and a time of great potential. I am energetically alert and alive.

Later, a little before 9 a.m., I am walking by the Gloucester-Sharpness canal. I notice light on leaves, and its influence on the gaps between trunks. The view, here, is over water. But it is the influence of sunlight that makes the greatest impression on me – captured in the picture as well as in real time.

By contrast, the spaces furthest away from the light source are able to show their earthiness, their woodiness and the depth of their green. The light is everywhere, but it is subtle and not over-bearing. It reveals its influence in different ways. Rather than radiating raw power, it allows possibilities in this small, fragile habitat. Contemplating autumnal states of light, as I approach the autumn equinox, I have been shown something about power and its manifestation.

2 Comments

July 27, 2022

LUGHNASADH 2022: RE-ENCHANTING TIME

A familiar sight at this time of year: a family of swans, adolescent cygnets with their parents. A superficial glance at the picture gives me a satisfying sense of near completion, of an annual cycle showing its results. It is a still image, literally a snapshot. Nothing in it can change.

Yet when I took the photo, the swans were highly mobile, constantly shifting their relative positions while sometimes gliding elegantly along the canal and sometimes pausing to investigate its banks. I also foresaw their likely passage through a more extended time. Soon enough, the cygnets will be grown up and on their own. A new beginning enabled by an ending.

I live in southern England, where daylight hours have begun noticeably to shorten. Lughnasadh (Lammas) marks the beginning of August. This festival initiates a quarter that moves through the autumn equinox and ends at Samhain. These three months embrace decline, decay and eventually death, whilst also celebrating grain and fruit harvests and (in past times) the culling of livestock to see us through the winter. The themes belong together.

I treasure this attunement to cycles of time. Part of my contemplative life rests in the timeless. Another part, more worldly, enriches my experience of time. By contrast mainstream western culture characterises time as a limited resource to be measured and priced; to be ‘spent’ productively and not ‘wasted’. The phrase ‘time is money’ comes to mind. This time hurtles onwards like a runaway train into a future always packaged as better, even redemptive, but now looking increasingly dystopian.

But any time we can know is a matter of human perception, and therefore malleable. There are, and have been, many ways for humans to live in time. For me, living the cyclical time of the eightfold wheel of the year, widely practised in Druid and Pagan culture, continues to be a re-enchanting experience.

Tag: Paganism