Offering of Words to Belenos

To the Shining One, to the Bright One,
My reverent heart is lifted as offering.
To the mighty Son of a mighty Mother,
Whose light fills the whole world,
These words are given as offerings.

Belenos, giver of riches, healer of the wide world,
Luminous God to who holds the harp,
And blesses good seeds and strong plows,
Accept the gifts of we who depend upon you
And who keep your companionship forever.

Wild God, glorious Youth eternal,
You are mighty, sending arrows to flight,
You are the eye that sees all,
Giving the gift of light to every mortal being,
And nourishing milk to all that are youthful.

Golden haired God, gazing upon the eternal plains,
Looking with Godly wisdom upon the vastness,
Down upon the dark and rich earth you see,
Unhindered through the twilight.
Under the night filled with stars, see us-
See the children of men gazing up and around,
Seeking to understand and to live well.

Into every woman's Fate, into every man's Fate,
Into every child's Fate,
You have infused summer and winter in equal measure,
And you keep the doorways of Nature's great body.
You stand between us and the Ancestors:
Let us know their friendship, too.

Blessed Son of a mighty Mother,
Establish us in peace, with untroubled minds,
And take us from darkness to light,
Now and at the end of our mortal days.

This Is The Forest Primeval: A Rebirth of the Oldest Values

This is the Forest Primeval: Pondering the relationship between deep ecology and Paganism, both ancient and modern, and containing a study and commentary on the sacred, eternal, and objective value system embodied by The Forest, drawing from the insightful writings of Holmes Rolston, and tying this all together with our Gods and our Ancestors. Copyright © 2011 by Budenicos. 

Introduction: Modern Pagans, Environmentalism, and Deep Ecology

Many people within the modern "Pagan" movements find themselves naturally drawn to issues relating to deep ecology, or ecological/environmental preservation. Many non-Pagans do as well; there seems to be something very instinctive in humans which wants to give an eye and ear to deeper perspectives about our role in preserving and living in better balance with our environment. Of course, not all humans care, or can even conceive of caring, about the environment in any "deep" way. Environmentalism has gone through many phases in its existence as a political and social movement- from heroic and green, to socially conscious, all leading up to the present day, where it is largely seen by conservative America as a liberal plot to destroy us all.

Now, strangely enough, I have encountered many "Pagans" who, for various reasons, cast a poison eye on the ordinary notion of environmentalism. They reject the idea that environmentalism has to be involved in Pagan religion, or that it should be. They reject the idea that Pagan religion and environmentalism are synonymous on any level, or that a relationship exists there in some way.

I have always found this position strange, and I have always explained it away by the presence of some very conservative people in the Pagan world, people who take their conservative political tendencies and infect their religion with it. People are, of course, free to do as they like. I only mention them because I hope that if any are reading this, that they give me a chance to explain why I believe they are missing something very profound about Pagan religion in the modern day.

I believe that deep or spiritual ecology- a philosophical perspective that takes environmentalism up to a purely religious level- is a natural part of Pagan religion, or should I say, I believe it was in the past, and that any truly sensitive, thinking Pagan will engage it in the modern day. These days we must "talk" about environmentalism, or spiritual ecology; in the past, of course, they certainly didn't frame it as we do, or discuss like we do. It was implied in many ways, understood and unconscious in others, and it permeated activities and even social structures in ways that the people themselves didn't fully grasp, but they did feel it. This is important to remember, when we set out to "rebuild" a Pagan worldview in the modern day, or when we try to allow the natural Pagan worldview running beneath the surface of things to re-emerge.

Deep ecology is a philosophical movement that teaches us to avoid exceptionalism- it teaches us that every being- human, animal, plant, or God- and perhaps even the non-human persons that are related to phenomenon like mountains and rivers- are not in a vertical hierarchy of superior and inferior value, but in a horizontal spread of relationships that extend to the timeless. It takes the position that we are all, each of us, aspects of an unfolding and sacred reality. That reality wouldn't be complete without all of us.

There is no "man above woman" or "gods above man" thinking from such a perspective; there is "man to woman" and "woman to man"; there is "men to Gods" and "Gods to men"- we are all sitting around a table of existence, in a way of picturing it, bound to those next to us, and those next to them, and even those across the table by certain rules, by certain forces, and always bound by reciprocation and recursive force. These "rules" aren't rules that humans or Gods thought up and wrote down. They are naturally occurring, value-free facts of reality that come to the forefront in an organic way anytime two or more beings interact.

This "horizontalization" of values and relationships was, I think, present in the animistic worldviews of the people of Asia and Europe long before the rise of Bronze and Iron-Age Pagan societies, and I believe that many of the features of Indo-European Pagan religion that we see, historically, can only be explained by a "core animism" that once informed the peoples who came to be the historical Pagans we know. With almost no exceptions, the Gods of old were depicted as being in special relationships with animals, symbolized by certain animals, announced by certain animals or natural phenomenon, or just associated with natural phenomenon of various kinds, and often depicted as shape-shifters. The depiction of "battles of light versus darkness" and even order versus chaos seem to reflect the most primal of realizations about night and day, and summer and winter.

If you want to see the true stone age precedent for stories of shape shifting beings, look to Native American and Siberian shamanic mythologies, and you can see how the people of these places, living in their own stone age before being steamrolled by European and Asian cultures, had plenty of powerful spiritual beings who took on many forms, and performed all the same functions that we in the west accord to Godly beings, including (in most) a primal realization of "Sky fathers" and "Earth mothers".

We would be fools to think that our own Native European ancestors didn't have similar beliefs and worldviews as these peoples, because in the stone age, humans were far fewer, and all related, no matter how spread out they became. Human brains and souls seem to work in distinctly similar ways, and this isn't just an empty statement; analysis of human mythical systems around the world, as well as human social systems from disparate cultures, reveal that humans have a very real and finite range of conceptualizing things like society and religion.

The Underground River

I think that behind the polytheistic religions of Europe, we can see an animistic sub-stratum; we can peel back the layers and see the original reality of the powerful, strange, shape-shifting spirits  whose primal identities had not yet differentiated away from trees or animals or even the human shape- those we today call "Gods", and which our Ancestors certainly knew in that way. They even changed their identities over time, and human conceptions of them evolved differently in many places, but an objective reality for them is there.

But there's more here than "Gods"- there is also a matter of worldview. Europe, even Pagan Europe, wasn't always ruled by kings and queens; it didn't always have a stratified society of workers and producers to grow or catch food, and warriors to fight, and intelligentsia to give us philosophy/religious rituals and insight; the later "caste" system of the Indo Europeans, when and where they had it, was something from a far later date than the days I'm talking about.

And no matter what social evolutions came about, beneath it all was (and still is) an underground river of strange shapes, stories, magical forms, and spiritual realities. We still draw from that underground river today for spiritual and creative nourishment. It is the source of dreams and visions, and the true home of the Gods. It is a part of humankind as much as it is a part of the suprasystem of life itself, which is not limited to mankind. Jung touched on it, or should I say, threw the gates open to it, with his cutting-edge theories of a collective unconsciousness, which was the hidden but potent source of human creativity and dreams, and the graveyard of all lost and broken dreams, lost Gods, and former glories.

The environmental movement, when one separates the politics from it, seems to be a re-emergence, from that underground river, of our sense of connection and responsibility to nature itself, our true mother. I say "mother" here to refer to a generative source of life. But this is where my talk now takes us to the religions of the Pagans.

All of our modern Pagan religions, without fail, either offer us an explanation for who or what our source or sources may be, and establishes them in some sort of veneration or at least understanding. Of course this is the case; all religions must establish something of this kind for the searching human mind, for the searching mind has a voracious appetite for meaning and understanding. The wisest religions have always pointed us, for our origins, back to the body of nature itself, the one place, the one collection of powers, which can even be demonstrated to have an ancient history and relationship with our species, and every other.

It is clear that Nature, as a Goddess, was venerated in Polytheistic societies all over Europe, and in other parts of the world. From localized Earth Mothers, to River Goddesses and the divine beings of springs, forests, and cropland, all the way up to nature as a whole (reference the ancient Orphic Hymn to Nature for the best exposition of this concept) we have ample evidence that our Ancestors believed nature was either divine in and of itself, or the home of countless divine powers. This is not a fact to be fought with; it is an invitation to re-enter into the dimension of the sacred that they knew, and expressed in countless ways. To do so does not make us the dreaded "hippie environmentalists"- it makes us more human, more in touch with the wisdom of our Ancestors, and more in touch with this world.

A wise person once told me that the God of thunder was not thunder itself; but as he overshadowed this world, thunder was a sign of his great and mighty presence. He was not here because of thunder; thunder was here because of him, and where his presence was, thunder was (at least at times.) This is important, I think, because it applies equally to the other Godly powers that our Ancestors knew- Where the Earth Mother is, Earth is, and we know Earth because she indwells it, and Earth knows its own reality because of her reality. We see grain grow, but we are seeing almost a shadow of the underlying-yet-inseparable living power which leaves grain in its tracks as it exists among these many divine powers in the web of nature.

This is a marvelous and beautiful statement of true Polytheology. The world's creative power isn't realized by the command of just one divine being; it is realized by a cooperation of many divine powers all working together. Because the many powers exist, everything else can come to exist, and those Godly powers themselves often depended on other powers to exist. This is the primordial worldview of interaction, of connectedness, and of inter-relationship.

This is not just a modern notion; this basic notion, stated in many forms and in many ways, often existed (and often still exists) solidly in the living cultures of Native peoples that have been carefully studied and documented by anthropologists worldwide. It is certainly to be found in many ancient and modern "Dharmic" religions. And it existed for all of us, once. We try to stuff it under dusty titles like "animism", but that's only part of the reality. I simply call it "The Way of Things", because it states the truth about our condition, the truth about Nature, and ultimately, the truth about our own lives- how we live, coexist, and rely on so many others.

The Forest Primeval and the Gods

I began this discussion with a talk about spiritual ecology, and now, I wish to shift gears to the Gods, and to the profound spiritual concept of "The Forest"- a concept that gained a beautiful and profound analysis from a Forester named Holmes Rolston. "The Forest" is not just a name given to a collection of trees, but to an archetype, a manifestation of creative force itself which reveals the objective values of this world that is our true origin. If you were looking for the holy grail of "objective values" for the Pagan world, or any world, you need look no further than The Forest itself.

Pagans in the past had no trouble- and still have no trouble- experiencing their Gods and Goddesses through natural phenomenon. From the hearth-fire Goddess to the Sky God, with all his winds and rain, to the generous earth Goddess herself, we aren't on unfamiliar ground. The association of trees with divinities, however, may be one of the most profound aspects of the ancient understanding that we have yet to really bring fully back into our consciousness as modern Pagans.

Of course trees figure prominently in almost all Pagan iconography, from all over the historical Pagan world. Even the bible presents us with stories of "Asherah Poles", sacred trees that stood in the groves of the Eastern Mother Goddess (and which were, I might add, ruthlessly torn down by the maniac followers of a certain jealous local god we all know so well.) The tree continues to appear everywhere- as a primordial symbol of creation, as the symbol of the wholeness of things, the axis of reality, the climbing-ladder to the heavens and to the Gods, and even as the first ancestors of mankind, who in both Norse and some Greek myths, were arisen from or created from trees.

Groves of trees were the primordial "sacred" places, all over Europe and the Near East and remained so for a very long time. As with all such ancient powers, their presence and power is still with us, in that underground river I spoke of, and this power cannot be shaken. The reason why is because "The Forest"- as symbolized by the Tree- is, as was said, an Archetype. It manifests the underlying creative principles of this reality. The Forest is the presence of the sacred, and the forest has the power to create life and demonstrate objective values. The forest is, in a very important way, the Mother and Father of all humans.

It is no mistake at all that trees have been fixed in our sacred iconography, all over, since forever. They are sacred. They manifest something sacred and eternal- the creative power of Nature itself. The system of the forest is the primordial system of life, of which every other system is really just a reflection. Our "Great Father" God, the Divine Ancestor, was often given the horns of a forest beast, or placed at the foot of a Tree- or he became the Tree. Again, this is no error, just the most profound of all organic truths being given expression.

The Dark Forest is the archetypal hiding place of secrets. But what it hides aren't secrets for the small-minded, power seeking fools; its secrets, the treasures inscribed on its leaves, are the secrets of life and objective value and reality. The Forest can show us what is real, and what was always real, and what will remain real, even after all human illusions have faded away.

Values Deep in the Woods

My friend Oengus sent me a link to the excellent article by the before-mentioned Holmes Rolston, called "Values Deep in the Woods." You can access it here. I will be quoting extensively from it, though I strongly urge you to read the entire thing- it's a short and easy read, but in keeping with all amazing works, it is super-packed with deep meanings and truths. A person could chew over it for weeks, really, uncovering layers of real treasure for the soul.

Rolston's essay is full of important insights. I have selected five of the most powerful points he made in his essay, at least from my modern Pagan perspective, to share and elucidate.

1. The Issue of Making Commodities out of Divine Powers

Rolston writes about the dangers- indeed, the hidden blasphemies- of "applied forestry" and "managed wilderness". He writes:

"The central goods of the biosphere--hydrologic cycles, photosynthesis, soil fertility, food chains, genetic codes, speciation, reproduction, succession--were in place long before humans arrived. The dynamics and structures organizing the forest do not come out of the human mind; a wild forest is wholly other than civilization. Confronting it I must penetrate spontaneous life on its own terms. The genius of forestry as a pure science helps us to appreciate the biology, ecology, integrity of the forest primeval. Immersed in a nonhuman frame of reference, foresters know the elements, raw and pure.

Applied forestry, making a commodity out of an archetype, is humane and benevolent at risk of prostituting the primeval. The principles reorganizing the managed forest do come out of the human mind. Seeking goods of their kind, humans modify the natural kinds. A domesticated forest, like a caged wolf, is something of a contradiction in terms. There remains what used to be a forest or wolf now reduced to something less. A tract of pine planted for paper pulp is not deep woods. The radical values are gone.

In the forest itself there are no board-feet of timber, BTU's, miles, or acre feet of water. There are trees rising toward the sky, birds on the wing and beasts on the run, age after age, impelled by a genetic language almost two billion years old. There is struggle and adaptive fitness, energy and evolution inventing fertility and prowess. There is cellulose and photosynthesis, succession and speciation, muscle and fat, smell and appetite, law and form, structure and process. There is light and dark, life and death, the mystery of existence. "

You cannot tame the wild without banishing forever a spiritual power that once had the ability to share its Godly self with human beings, and with everything else. The wild wolf darting through the forest lives in our imagination in a way that the domesticated dog does not- the civilized soul takes comfort from the domesticated beast, but the broader soul- the wilder, mysterious aspect of us- delights at the wolf. While we are asleep, that wild soul darts off to join the wolf in its nightly hunting and feasting. Just so, the wild soul, the divine soul in us, is called away to The Forest, too- in our dreams, in our waking, and after we die, when we go back to the "roots" of existence, from whence we came.

By trying to tame the Forest- by exceeding the boundaries set by wisdom in our need to reach out and utilize the sacred natural resources of our world for our survival- we are simply driving the true divinities further and further from our own awareness. If we would be Pagans again, as the Ancestors were- and I believe we can be- we must cease this activity, whether it be in our world, in our minds, in our hearts, or in our personal lives, even our own backyards.

I'm not suggesting that we suddenly and dramatically let all of our cities and houses become overgrown with kudzoo and start wearing buckskin clothing (though that might be kind of cool for a while.) I'm suggesting that we cease giving so much power, attention, and blind faith to the "taming urge" that we allow to unthinkingly lead us by the noses to some very bad places. People hold on to the "tame" and the "civilized" like rafts amid a stormy sea, and they come to hate the stormy sea, not thinking that it is precisely the storm and churning water that gives so much passion, drama, and energy to life at the fundamental level. If you hate the untamed, you hate life. If you accept it more, not only do you live better, but you're seldom as bored- or boring.

Let something grow wild. Let the underlying and untamed powers have their way, somewhere. See if their strange presence can change the way you feel, or your dwelling place feels. Stop being so pent up in yourself, and let the hidden side of you emerge at times. "In wildness is the preservation of the world"- and the preservation of man? What we do to forests, we always first did to ourselves.

There is an enlightened "wildness" which begins as a recognition that the true homes of the Gods are not the sorts of places that "tamed" minds can reach easily. Such minds might believe they were in hell if they did reach them easily. And in a special sense, fully divorced from any monotheistic misuse of the term "hell", they would be right. "Hell" is the depths, the untamed and authentic depths that are objectively what they are and have always been, regardless of how much that hurts human desires for them to be different. "Hell" is the objective reality, sacred and eternal, and uncaring about how much human relative hopes and desires burn, freeze, rot, and melt against its ancient, truthful power. Take heart- when the pain is over, all that's left is the truth, wild and free. And that might be considered "heaven" to some.

2. Re-Creation and the Survival of the Soul

Rolston writes:

"The word recreation contains the word creation. Humans go outdoors for the repair of what happens indoors, but they also go outdoors because they seek something greater than can be found indoors--contact with the natural certainties. Forests and sky, rivers and earth, the everlasting hills, the cycling seasons, wildflowers and wildlife--these are superficially just pleasant scenes in which to recreate. They are the timeless natural givens that support everything else.

Those who recreate here value leisure (watching a sunset, listening to loons, or to rain) in contrast to work for pay; they value being in a wild world that runs itself and need not be labored over. They value work (climbing, setting up camp) that isn't for pay; an environment with zest, in contrast to a boring or familiar job. They value an escape, if you like, but they value also being drawn to roots. They want to know the weather, protected by minimal but enough cover and shelter so as to leave rain or sun close at hand.

They want to submit to the closing day at dusk, to be roused by the rising sun without benefit of clock. They want to know the passing seasons when migrants return, or leaves fall, without benefit of calendar."

Such a powerful passage! How many of you, of us, have tried to escape to the camping trip, the national park, the hiking trail or the canoe, for just this reason- to "re-create" yourself. Recreation is Re-creation, an attempt on our parts to disengage from the world that dulls the soul, and engage the world that revives it- the natural world, the untamed world, the forests that are still sacred Groves for the Gods. Where did our Gods go when the churches were lifted up and the sacred groves chopped down? They withdrew further into the forests, and the wild places. And there, they are to be found still. A journey to those places to find them will result in more power than you could easily imagine- if you are up to the trip, that is.

"Recreation" now takes on a greater, deeper meaning. I am not just looking to re-create myself, my own soul, but to re-create a relationship with the Gods of my Ancestors, and with the Ancestors. And the power of The Forest is how it can be done, just as it was through the Forest that it was done before.

3. As Near to Ultimacy as We Can Come: The Presence of the Powers

The Forest Wilderness has always been the true temple of the Gods and Sacred Powers. Rolston writes:

"The groves were God's first temples" (Bryant, A Forest Hymn). Trees pierce the sky, like cathedral spires. Light filters down, as through stained glass. In common with churches, forests (as do sea and sky) invite transcending the human world and experiencing a comprehensive, embracing realm. Forests can serve as a more provocative, perennial sign of this than many of the traditional, often outworn, symbols devised by the churches. Mountaintop experiences, a howling storm, a quiet snowfall, solitude in a sequoia grove, an overflight of honking geese--these generate experiences of "a motion and spirit that impels . . . and rolls through all things." (Wordsworth, "Lines Above Tintern Abbey").

Being among the archetypes, the forest is about as near to ultimacy as we can come in phenomenal experience. I become astonished that the forest should be there, spontaneously generated. There are no forests on Mars or Saturn; none elsewhere in our solar system, perhaps none in our galaxy. But Earth's forests are indisputably here. There is more operational organization, more genetic history in a handful of forest humus than in the rest of the universe, so far as we know. How so? Why? A forest wilderness elicits cosmic questions."

The question isn't even one of "the rest of the universe."  One day it will be known- assuming that we are Fated to even have a future in which we come to this realization- The Forest is the universe.  Down its natural ways and hidden paths, one goes deeper into the heart of all reality. The Otherworld is found that way, where the white stag darts and leads the hunter- not a simple walk "across" a horizontal plane, but a walk deeper, vertically, into the heart and core of reality, nature, and meaning. Yes, cosmic questions are posed here, but the answers are even more "cosmic"- The Forest and Cosmos are the same; one is a mirror of the other.

4. What is Not Significant from the Perspective of Objective Sacredness

If you're anything like me, you've become good and tired of the way the true god of our age- Money- runs everything, and in time, ruins everything. Just about everything we think is significant is tied to money or commerce somehow, tied to the constant struggle to obtain or maintain wealth. We've even managed to wrap around money our deepest urges towards love and care for our families- because after all, no matter how much you love them, if you don't make money for them, you're a lost cause of a family member or father or husband or wife.

I daresay that most of the people reading this blog have at times in their lives- or perhaps even now- found themselves plundered on the inside by the overpowering effort to make money. We've all found our own minds flattened by the capitalist and corporatist machinery that preaches, from day one, that having the money to buy the nicest things is the greatest goal for a "successful" life.

What does the Forest-God say? Rolston writes:

"Such values (the values of the Forest) are, it is commonly said, "soft" beside the "hard" values of commerce. They are vague, subjective, impossible to quantify or demonstrate. Perhaps. But what is really meant is that such values lie deep. The forest is where the "roots" are, where life rises from the ground. A wild forest is, after all, something objectively there. Beside it, culture with its artifacts is a tissue of subjective preference satisfactions. Money, often thought the hardest of values, is nothing in the wilderness. A dollar bill has value only intersubjectively; any who doubt this ought to try to spend one in the woods. Dollar values have in the forest no significance at all.

What is there that is objectively significant? The phenomenon of forests is so widespread, persistent, and diverse, appearing almost wherever moisture and climatic conditions permit it, that forests cannot be accidents or anomalies, but rather must be a characteristic, systemic expression of the creative process. Forests are primarily an objective sign of the ultimate sources, and only secondarily do they become managed resources."

And this is the core of what is important- that "forests are primarily an objective sign of the ultimate sources." The ultimate sources- the divine, underlying powers of nature, the Gods- these are important, not money. Insofar as money preserves us and helps us toward a future realization of our noble Ancestral ideals- ideals in line with reality- money takes on a positive use. But money is nothing to the Forest; the million dollar bill, if it existed, would rot away quickly, if left in on the moist forest floor.  

Only the sacred is truly and objectively significant. If you want to value the same things the Gods and Ancestors value, take a walk in the Forest and see what is valued there. Live with awareness alongside those you love and cherish, and see what is valued there. There's no doubt that, relatively speaking, wealth can get you all the sushi you can eat, that second yacht, or that high-power CEO's chair. There's a lot of happiness to be found in that, and lots of room for boasting, and lots of comfort for the long (or short) haul of a lifetime. But do these things- or the desire for these things, and the efforts to gain these things- reflect objective and therefore significant values, values that are still values when the relative realities of things have faded away?

I don't take a "one way or the other" approach to this quandary. I don't think that you have to be poor, naked, and barefooted in the woods to find real value in life. All the same, being honest about what is significant in some ultimate way, and what is not, is truly necessary for authentic happiness and peace. Not being honest about that is at best a form of metaphysical laziness, and at worst, willful ignorance, willfully ignoring the sacred dimension in exchange for rotting matter, atomically decaying mass, or shallow pleasures that end when your nerve endings do. Love what the Gods love (a poetic statement meaning "cherish objective values") and the rest will follow organically.

5. What Sets Humans Apart from Non-Human Beings

Do human beings really have some objective, ontological value "above" non-human beings? This is an old argument, and one that even today, this very day, I was engaged in a discussion with someone about. Rolston writes:

"Surrounded by politicians and economists, even by foresters at business, one gets lured into thinking that value only enters and exits with human preference satisfactions. Surrounded by the forest, a deeper conclusion seems irresistible. The forest is value-laden. Trees use water and sunshine; insects resourcefully tap the energy fixed by photosynthesis; warblers search out insect protein; falcons search for warblers. Organisms use other organisms and abiotic resources instrumentally.

Continuing this deeper logic, organisms value the resource they use instrumentally because they value something intrinsically and without further contributory reference: their own lives. No warbler eats insects in order to become food for a falcon; the warbler defends her own life as an end in itself and makes more warblers as she can. A warbler is not "for" anything else; a warbler is for herself. From the perspective of a warbler, being a warbler is a good thing.

Biological conservation is not something that originates in the human mind, modeled by Forplan programs, or written into Acts of Congress. Biological conservation is innate as every organism conserves, values its life. Nonconservation is death. From this more objective viewpoint, there is something subjective and naive (however sophisticated one's technology) about living in a reference frame where one species takes itself as absolute and values everything else relative to its utility.

True, warblers take a warblo-centric point of view; spruce push only to make more spruce. But no nonhuman organism has the cognitive power, much less the conscience, to lift itself outside its own sector and evaluate the whole. Humans are the only species who can see the forest for what it is in itself, objectively, a tapestry of interwoven values."

I think this passage says something of extreme importance. It highlights the one matter of cognitive power that separates humans from nonhuman organisms on our planet- our power to see the forest (another way of saying "see the whole") for what it is itself- a tapestry of interwoven forces that inter-weave to create and sustain everything. Humans are part of that weave- parts with the power to see the whole for what it is, and by seeing, to understand, in a broad way, their place in this great family and in this great system.

This power of "seeing the whole" isn't something that suddenly bestows humans with an ontological value beyond a squirrel or an ant. It is a power that actually bestows humans with only one thing that a squirrel or an ant doesn't have- responsibility to the whole. We aren't meant to use our special power to enslave other animals and non-human beings to create a satisfaction machine for ourselves.

We are meant to use our special power to see to the health of the whole, insofar as we are able- and this is an important point because humans cannot "see to the health" of the world either alone, or fully on their own power. We do live in the hands of greater forces, and being part of the web of life, we can't step apart from it to "be stewards" for it (the idea that we should be "stewards of creation" is a disastrous invitation to exceptionalism and abuse of nature, as we have seen, historically) But we can act from within nature, as far as we are able, to be preservers and helpers of the lives inside. We can be cooperators with Nature, with the Gods. We can be reverential. To be those things is part of us, and when we do it, we feel the rightness of it, deep down.

Being helpers of other lives and even ecosystems doesn't mean that we can't take lives. Humans get eaten by lions; insects eat on us while we're alive; bacteria live on us and in us as their own private estates; and we humans likewise eat other things and utilize the environment to our survival. Humans have fought with one another for ages, over resources and for reasons of honor and glory- and we have even given up our own lives and the lives of animals in religious sacrifice to the underlying sacred powers of this reality. Taking life is not the issue now, and never was.

The issue is what happens when we take this too far, driven by an anthropocentric logic which puts itself apart from the rest of the world. In that "cut off" anthropocentrism, the worst aspects of our character emerge: elitism, exceptionalism, greed, the thirst to conquer and control everything around us, without a mind given to the wisdom of cooperation and coexistence. We would change the world to suit us far more than is necessary, and while we're doing it, we will dishonor the other living beings who are as much a part of this as we are by reducing them in our minds to only "property" or "things for our use."

This is not wise; this is not the right way for us to live, in a truly objective sense. The underlying creative principles that express themselves as everything in this world, and which are the true parents of all, including mankind, did not weave us with our special ability to know the whole so that we would do this- we are not supposed to turn against the body of nature which is, at final analysis, our own extended body. We are supposed to act intelligently within it to preserve its operation for the good of all- first for the Good of our people, and secondly for the Good of the whole. Moderation in all things!

We know that this is what we are supposed to do because we can easily see the consequences of not doing it. The terrible consequences of our typical modern ways of life, for other beings and for ourselves, which no sufficiently aware person can deny, are testament enough that we have stepped outside of the Fatefully-ordained limits of our power. As we violate those natural, organic boundaries, and those boundaries of wisdom, the one objective "value system"- nature itself- steps in, often in a wrathful or lethal way, to set the boundaries back, if any still exist to be set back. The one objective value-system, which is this world, this forest of life, is not silent on these matters.

Naturally, I can't and wouldn't suggest that our Pagan Ancestors were all consciously deep ecologists, with quite the same clarity and purity of the ideas written in this work of mine. But they also weren't all basic, shallow, superficial materialists and hedonists, either, as so many people tend to be today. I think that, after a point, they (the Ancestors) straddled the "middle ground" between the primordial vision of inter-relationship, and the loss of it fully. Perhaps in their time, while owning beasts, or hunting them, or eating them, or while fighting for the wealth that defined their age, these people maintained an intuitive or half-unconscious realization of the deeper realities of things- and perhaps, to them, that wordless realization was summed up as "mystery", "power", "magic", the awes and terrors of the divine, or what today we might, in our supremely degenerate way, call "superstition" or "old folk beliefs".

I don't think that an Ancestor in Bronze Age Britain who owned a pig really believed that this pig was mere meat for him to do with as he willed, some lump of flesh and property that was "put here for his use" by the Gods. I think he saw the creature as tied into the magical force of life itself, the strange forces that everything was a part of, and I think he likely knew the stories and taboos and myths of his people concerning pigs, all of which might have colored his treatment of the beast, even up to the point of slaughtering it, if he needed to or wanted to. I think that he was on a more "equal plane" with the pig emotionally and intuitively, even if he lived in a time wherein the human intellectual sense of separation from beasts and other parts of nature (a regrettable side-effect of social evolution beyond a certain point of complexity) had begun to take its more pronounced effect.

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All of this, my friends, is the blossoming of a true Pagan aesthetic of value- and it fills me with joy to think that the symbol of the entire blossoming is nothing more or less than the Tree, and The Forest- the true organic scriptures of Pagan religion, whose pages can never be lost or rot away. When I think of the Gods, or experience their power, I know joy. But when I think with a mind to know what is valuable and good, I know nothing but The Forest.

Decoding the Sacred Language of the Ancestors: Preliminaries

What follows is a letter I wrote to a dear friend and fellow polytheist, regarding a systematization I have been developing for understanding the core behind the various polytheistic remnants we have from the Gallic, British, and Irish ancient past. I normally shun too much "systemic" thinking on matters as subtle as the unseen world, and for good reasons- but I think these exercises can have some usefulness when it comes to creating our own modern approach to the Gods and Goddesses. I will develop this material further, soon.

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Dear Grannia:

You should be happy and edified to know that I have, at long last, made my best strides towards "cracking the code", as it were, of the Ancestral Polytheistic language with respect to our people in Britain and Ireland, and to an extent further afield on the mainland. There is no doubt that all of these stories of Gods and Goddesses that we gain from the Ancestral traditions were parts of a sacred language, in which the powerful beings of non-human persons took on the role of "divinities" and operated in people's minds and lives. My project to unravel something of that special language has been a chief work of mine for years.

The native Ancestral understanding of "Gods and Goddesses" may well have been different from the Greeks or Romans, and indeed, we have enough evidence that the peoples of Northern and Northwestern Europe did conceive of the divinities as shape-shifters, as formless, or able to take whatever form they liked; they could (and did) appear as the rush of water under rocks, or as trees, or as the sun, or as the flight of birds. This is an important perspective to gain. To be fair, the Gods and Goddesses of Hellas were also known to take different shapes at times; but the prevailing attitude of anthropomorphism in Greece (and in Rome, at a much later date) implies a sort of evolution or change in conceptions of the divine as a whole- certainly a move towards the urban temple and the city-based institution of culture and religion which is outside of the true spiritual aesthetic of our own Ancestors.

I'll give you the short version now of the results of my project; I intend to write something more substantial on this later.

The "Roman interpretation" gives us some good clues, but I have discovered it is almost useless to really reaching out and discovering who the Gods and Ancestral beings are and were. I'm glad to have the testimony of the Roman pagans as they assimilated native Gallic and British Gods, as some of the information they give is useful- but their use in the reconstruction of true "pantheons" in the native sense is limited. Here are my conclusions, after all this time (some are different from my previous conclusions). It is hard to categorize something like a God or a Goddess, but in knowing that our attempts to categorize must be very provisional, we can. In truth, as I point out later, the Gods and Goddesses far transcend our desire to do as the Romans or Greeks did and put them away in cubby-holes. They spread out through the seen and unseen and enter into many aspects of life, just as we human do, over time.

The value of a scheme like the one I suggest here is only as a key for unlocking some of the twists and turns of the ancient Pagan cultures, as they became lost in the mists of time and behind the obscuring light of other cultures, and trying to focus on the key "compartments" of ancient life that can be just as important to us today, when we start to approach the Gods ourselves- and when we desire to do it from a more Brythonic, Gallic, or Gaelic perspective or aesthetic. The Gods are real, and these ancient ancestral cultures knew them in ways that were just as real. How they knew and what they knew can edify us today, if we allow it.

No modern writing is some sort of "revelation" of the ancient religion. All modern writings are attempts to gain some small measure of insight from the ancient religions as we bring them back to life today, in our own lives. This work is no different. However, this work, I think, transcends many of the foolish errors of the modern day, from new-age duotheism/monotheism, to the idea that all the Gods and Goddesses were just local imps and demons, or personified natural forces. This work reminds us of their true personhood, and of the power of true polytheism to defy what we expect.

There are four broad categories of "Divine Beings" that I use as my framework of understanding: The Ancestor Gods, The Son of Light Gods, the Craft or Culture Gods, and the Sea Gods.

The Great and Divine Ancestors

The oldest are the Ancestor-Gods, and this category contains, first and foremost, the Land Goddess, who is mother to all others Gods and living beings, including man, and who is "Mother of the Waters", the waters that come up out of the earth- the River Goddess for whom so many rivers are named. She is a giantess, titanic, mighty and dark, and like all these ancient beings in this category, has a connection with the celestial night sky and the stars (ref. the constellation Llys Don here). The Ancestral Gods are closely aligned with the elements themselves, the raw and first powers of nature. The Land-Goddess, the Sovereign Goddess and Grandmother to everything else, is nature broadly, in a sense. As the hidden source of waters, she is the Sovereign of the Underworld, as well. All life proceeding from her and returning to her, she is the life and death and fertility's ultimate source and end.

She stands behind the stories of Danu, Don, Anu, Rhiannon, Modron, Morrigan, all of the "Great Queen" Goddess figures.

The second great being in this category is the Divine Ancestor, the Fore-Father, mate to the Land Goddess, and ruler over the dead in the Underworld. He is the "Dis Pater", the Underworld God, the source of life, who often enough appears as a Tree in places, or is associated with the symbol of the tree- not, I don't think, because of any "world tree" or "axis of the cosmos" notion, but because tree-trunks and root-boles are quite phallic, and because the tree, and the forest by extension, is a perfect expression of the creative matrix of life- the most sacred manifestation of the underlying creative principles of reality which are parents to us all. Our ancestors in places around the Indo-European world believed themselves descended from trees or having an origin from trees, if you recall, from ancient Greece to ancient Norway. Were our Ancestors not "the people who came out of the dark forest?"

In Britain, as revealed through later lore, he acts as a psychopomp, which was one of the things that confused me through the Roman interpretation. Hermes/Mercury had that function to the Romans, but not among the British Celts so much, as it turns out- and thus the conflation that can lead to confusion. He is Father of men, forests, beasts, and life generally, holder of the power of nature, and guardian of nature. He takes the great "fertility" function.

Gwyn Ap Nudd, Vindos, Donn, Beli Mawr, Bile, Dagda, Sucellos, Conall Cernach, and Cernunnos are all reflexes of this primordial figure- he is the "strong big lad", the mighty one, and the "God of the People" in many places. Gwynn is one reflex here who stands out in having a particularly psychopompic function- the "Wild Hunter" leading and searching for the dead. These Gods also have command over the raw elements, and the storm- the storm is, after all, the full operation of the elements in rage mode, and they are Storm Gods.

Remarkably, the human Ancestors also fall into this first and most primordial, majestic category, too- for they live in us, and in the Land, and in the elements, and mediate the force of the First Ancestors to us. They do this in the same way a river mediates the essence of its source to you, when you touch its waters at any point- by flowing out from its source, it carries water that was once in the source. Your body and soul are both parts of a river of Ancestral power that includes all who have gone before, back to the Foremother and Forefather. The "Divine Mothers", the Matronae and the Ancestral Genii, depicted hooded, mysterious, or merged with burial sites and the ground itself, are part and parcel of this first category, and thus worshiped with the same gravity and attention.

The Son of Light, or the Great Son of the Mother

The next category, the "Son of Light" Gods, are where we find the most widespread of divine figures, but also the most subtle in nature, and possibly the most confusion of figures, if we are not careful. The Son of Light is a singular being, with different manifestations around the Ancestral world, who is son to the Great Mother and Great Father. (Here we find the Mabon, son of Modron.) He is not just their son; he is the presence of the immortal spirit in all of nature- including humans.

His appearance, that of a youth, symbolizes the eternally young in all of us. This is Mabon, Belenos, and Oengus Mac Og- the "Sun" God, though you musn't let this lead to an over-simplification of his character; the sun, aside from its vivifying power and its power to chase away dark powers, is an emblem of this God's undying light and spirit. He is the healer, the mediator between humans and the divine, between humans and the Ancestors, and the God of harmony, peace, and occult or sorcerous/mysterious insight. He also has functions as a sacrificial God, too- linked to the ground and to sacrifice on behalf of the people.

There are always secondary functions in these beings like fertility and even hunting or provisioning- the healing God can always kill, and so he can be pictured as a hunter or a warrior, easily. But the Son of Light is primarily an healer and enlightener of man. Here, the association with Apollo gives us much help in the nature and character of this complex figure. The Son of Light is the true universal God of the Celtic peoples- as universal as the Sun in the sky- and certainly the most widespread and popular, with Lugus coming in at a close second. But the Son of Light transcends cultures, in much the same way that the Foreparents do. This is not just "Celtic" religion we are talking when we speak of him; we are talking human religion, now- the religion of the body of nature and the elements giving rise to all things, and the eternal spirit that arises from them.

The Divine Powers of Craft and Culture

Now, the third category, the Craft and Culture Gods, are possibly the best known and most recorded- and these are the Gods who, again are children (like we) of the Ancestral powers, and who are responsible for the workings of society, the gifting of technologies, and the crafts of living. They stand over institutions like war, smithing, hearth-keeping, agriculture, etc. In this category you can find all of the minor Irish "Tuatha De Dannan" Gods and Goddesses (like Dian Cet, the healing God) and others. They are preeminently divine beings of social order and interaction, and great creativity and skill. In this category, we see the luminaries of the Sons and Daughters of Don in Wales, as well.

Lugus/Lugh/Llew, Nodens/Nudd/Nuada, Govannon, and Brigid are the four chief examples of this category of beings. Lugus, the most widespread God, was widespread because he was the God of oaths and commerce, and the "outsider" God who was good at everything (the all-skilled), and who won his way into society and became a ruler. He is literally the God of skill and ingenuity, who, being good at everything, means he can be approached by just about anyone for his aid at anything they do for a living, or for what they need. Lugus does not have a name that has anything to do with "light"- quite the opposite, his name may refer to the darkness, to something shining in the darkness, and to "interaction" as well as oaths.

He was certainly a war God and a sorcery God, because he could tap the dark, terrifying fomorian side of his nature to do magic. He was a Druid or sorcerer among the Gods, in other words. His figure is the "tricky" one, very much the mercurial figure he was associated with by the southerners. His great power and versatility made him the most popular of the Ancestral Gods, as place-names and cultic remains show. What most people don't see in Lugus today, but what they should, is the danger implied by his uncanny nature, the dark and wild side of him that is barely hidden in the Ancestral stories. And yet, In Ireland we see him lead the Gods of craft and civilization and order to victory over the dark fomorian powers. In this sense, he is very similar to the Odin figure of the Germanic peoples, even down to their associations with ravens, magic, spears, and one-eyed appearance.

Nuada was, for the longest time, my biggest quandary. I know now that He was and is a God of catching things- literally, associated with the water, and fishing. But he was also the catcher of animals, a hunter, and the god of utilizing tools to do things, and a healer. He was a more primal, probably among humans as a first teacher of types, a god of more basic crafts needful to immediate survival. From any such God as Nuada/Nudd, sovereignty can be drawn by human leaders, and Nuada, like Lugus, or even the Great Ancestor before them, were often "Toutal" or tribal Gods to various peoples, and the leaders of those people drew sovereign wisdom and power from them to co-create a just and powerful reign on earth in harmony with the Unseen world. With enough time, the "Great God" of any group or tribe evolves from the sovereign God that their own Ancestors drew so much force from.

This can explain why to certain Nordic peoples of one period, Odin assumed the role of "All Father", above all other Gods- while evidence clearly exists to show that Odin was certainly not always in such a position among all Germanic peoples at all times. But a single group of people who did see Odin in this way went on to have their particular beliefs and lore survive to us now, in the Icelandic Eddaic literature, which further lead modern people to make assumptions about the religion of all ancient Germanic peoples from a single and very particular source- not smart!

A true appraisal of polytheism shows that any sort of conceptions and relationships between Gods and men are possible, and this is a good thing, indeed- humans can evolve any combination of unique ways of thinking and acting with respect to their relationships with these powerful beings who are partners to us, teachers, helpers, and even Fore-Parents to us, in the world of nature. There is no "right" pantheon in polytheistic religion. There is only the reality of many divine powers, and the reality of many human relationships with them, evolved over time. Polytheism is responsive to human situations, events, and needs in this way, just as the Ancestral powers are, whether they be human or Godly ancestors, or other divine powers that enter into contracts and relationships with us.

Govannon, the smith God, appears in Britain and Ireland, and his presence in this category is easy enough to understand, as well as him importance to society. Brigid, who, alongside Lugus, appears to have been important just about everywhere, is the Goddess of the hearth fire, but also of smithing, healing, and even war. She's very much the "Minerva" figure the Romans saw in her. She's also the Dagda (the Divine Ancestor's) daughter, just as the lore reveals. "Brigantia" in Britain could have been her, though that name just means "high, exalted one" which could have referred to the First Mother, and her altars or sacred places on high hills.

The Divine Powers of the Waters and the Passageways Unseen

The primal Sea Gods are last- Llyr, Dylan, Mannanan Mac Lir- and they seem to have that "older than the other Gods" presence that you'd expect from primal deities. Being closer to the sea, the realm of the Fomorian monsters, they are titanish seeming, along with their mates (like Fand) who are associated with the sea, it's produce, and the mists of the waters, and transition across waters, making them (like Mannanan) "portal" Gods, Gods who can lead mortals from one world to the next, or part veils between these two worlds. 

Notes on the Gods and Goddesses of War among the Ancestors

IF you look at this fourfold system, it all begins to make sense, and avoids uncomfortable puzzles and overlaps that confuse people. One more thing must be said- the Romans called many Celtic Gods "Mars"- but there was no Celtic "mars". Any of the Toutal Gods could be the God prayed to for war functions, to support the people in conflict. Lugus has martial functions, so does Nuada/Nodens, so does the First Father, and the names given for the "Mars" god- names like "Mogetios", the "Mighty One" or "Segomos", the "Bold One", or "Budenicos", the "victorious one", are not names, but titles of honor piled on various Gods.

The "conflict Goddesses"- like Morrigan, are the same; this is the Mighty Mother herself in conflict or war mode, giving victory to her people. Without her blessing, victory would not be possible. The various "conflict goddesses"- the native Celtic versions of "Victoria", Victory, are names for the Sovereign Goddess in her war form- reference here the Andrasta or Andarta of the Iceni. We must not hesitate, as some do, to see the Morrigan as a reflex of the Land-Goddess, the "source of rivers" or "source of waters from below" Goddess, as her mythology clearly presents her creating rivers by urinating them out- a perfect (if gritty to our modern sensibilities) symbol of the earth giving forth rivers. And it is the Land Goddess herself who determines the victor of battles fought on her body, and who determines who will have the right to rule over populations of people that must live on her body and depend on it. We know that the ancient Greeks accorded to the primal Earth Mother the power over prophecy; Morrigan, likewise, appears as an arch-prophetess in Irish tradition.

The "shrieking women" of conflict, the death-spirits, appearing as Ravens (related to the Morrigan, and seen not unjustly as a Celtic version of the Norse Valkyries) are again a class of female spirit associated with war and the sovereign Goddess; just as Morrigan functioned as a "chooser of the slain", so do these "fateful women", as the lore tells us. The notion of the Otherworld being dominated by female powers who are tied to Fate is a truly Celtic perspective, leading to names like "The Land of Women" (Tir na ban) for the Unseen world in Ireland.

The Cruel Initiatrix

The same "conflict Goddesses"- our "cruel mothers" as it were, contain a sub-category of initiatory Goddesses (initiators through cruel strife or torment), and again, when we approach these complex figures- like Cerridwen, for instance,  we are coming to the ground of very primordial religion, where the great Earth Goddesses was seeress and initiatrix- few have any issue associating the mysterious "Lady of the Lake" in Arthurian mythos with the Sovereign Goddess; Cerridwen is likewise a Lady in a lake. Our initiatrix-Goddess is the one who, using the terrifying powers of life and death, transforms men and women into sorcerers and even divinities of their own kind. The Lady of the Lake bestows just imperium; Cerridwen bestows transformative insight, both gifts of the greatest of divinities.

Land Goddess/Land Goddesses and the Genii Loci

For those who dislike the notion of so many apparently different Goddesses collapsing through reflex into one Titanic and ancient figure, comfort can be had in the notion that each "Land" (not that "lands" have hard, objective boundaries somehow outside of human perceptions) has its own reflex of sovereignty, its own feminine indwelling power who, for all practical purposes either is an individual power, or acts as though she is, and she governs activities of sovereignty and the mediation of life-force and prosperity in that area. I don't personally accept this theory, but it has appeal to many.

One reason why it has appeal is because there are "native" and unique spiritual powers to be found in every location- the Genius Loci, as the Romans named them- and often enough, they or it appear in female form (though this is not hard-cut necessary fact; nothing in the Unseen world is so clean-cut or easy.) These "land spirits" are everywhere, and countless- and some powerful enough can (and did) gain the worship due to Gods from our Ancestors in various places that came to depend on them for various reasons. Of course, with the Ancestors also often seen as merged with the land itself in various places, another overlap occurs between the "land spirits" and the Ancestral powers- and this final fact not only gives us another dimension to the Land Goddesses, the Land spirits, and the Ancestral dead which is worth pondering, but it also brings my brief talk here to a close.

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Copyright © 2011 by Budenicos. All Rights Reserved.