Escaping"Wiccan
Escapism"
I cannot rightly say "all,"
or even "most," but certainly many of the Wiccans
I have known or observed over the years appear to find in
Wicca a unique brand of escapism from the travails of our
modern world, a safe haven from the uniquely complex moral,
environmental, social and political issues that define our
era. They appear to seek to turn back the clock, to retreat
into a pagan agrarian culture that no longer exists, or to
"resurrect" a Medieval, "thatched-cottage-on-the-edge-of-the-woods"
society that is far more a product of Renaissance festivals
and paperback fantasy novels than of anything to be found
in real, recorded history. This nostalgic (from the Greek
nostos algos, or literally, "To look homeward with longing")
brand of Wicca generally embodies an abdication of responsibility
for the ills of modern society, rather than the conscious
creation of resolutions to those ills and a brighter future
for everybody.
But I understand those nostalgic
feelings, I really do. Society, at this present moment in
history, is frighteningly unbalanced in favor of violence,
fascism, corporate hegemony, misogyny, the Industrial rape
and pillage of the Earth and its parallel attack on the human
spirit in the form of rampant consumerism, etc. We are clearly
headed at break-neck speed toward almost certain disaster.
Faced with our present real world situation, who wouldn't
"Look homeward with longing?"
There's an episode of the
old 1960s Star Trek television series in which Kirk and company
beam down to help evacuate a planet whose sun is about to
go supernova. But when the "away team" reaches the
planet's surface, they find nobody home. The residents have
all vanished, having used a historical video library/time
machine to escape the destruction by slipping into their own
past – years, decades, even centuries prior to the explosion
of their sun. Faced with similar impending disaster (in our
case, looming environmental collapse, prefaced by probable
economic, political and social upheavals) many people would
like to follow that imaginary TV example, to escape into the
past and avoid the consequences of the last thousand years
or so of Western history.
Some of these folks, as described
above, are drawn to Wicca – but not only to Wicca! This
exact psychological phenomenon is the force behind the empowerment
of Christian and Islamic Fundamentalism in America and throughout
the world, as well. Knee-deep in the drek of our post-modern,
post-industrial, in many ways post-Christian, and our clearly
post-certainty world, the "Golden Ages" of the past
look pretty good, even if they have to be spun out of the
whole cloth of our imaginations to grant us relief from the
pain and fear of the present moment
But, unlike the lucky extraterrestrials
in that Star Trek episode, we do not possess time travel technology,
or even a truly accurate record of our past to escape into.
For us the arrow of time moves in one direction only –
forward – and the only thing we can say about the future
with absolute certainty is that it is coming into being for
all of us one day at a time, and all too often with the most
frightening, "nostalgically" Fundamentalist elements
of our species at society's helm. No global Goddess culture
of the ancient past is going to save us from the self-fulfillment
of their apocalyptic vision.
But a global Goddess culture
now, today – a world in which "An' It Harm None,
Do What You Will" forms the ground for all human morality,
ethics and law – would make (pardon the expression)
one hell of a difference! A gentle global culture that revered
the Divine Feminine, that taught reincarnation, karma, self-responsibility
and the spiral of constant improvement in circular time (as
opposed to the prevailing Middle Eastern paradigm of life
as a battleground of absolute Good and Evil, sin and salvation,
and Humankind's downward spiral of continual decay toward
Apocalyptic destruction) would send 90% or better of the dilemmas
plaguing Humanity to the dustheap of history overnight. Just
like that. Wiccans would not wage religious wars, or kill
over access to natural resources. Wiccans would not hijack
planes and crash them into populated buildings any more than
they would bomb Third World countries out of existence in
retaliation for such crimes. Wiccans would neither work to
homogenize the world by "Americanizing" foreign
cultures, nor destroy the biosphere of the Earth we all rely
on for every breath, drink and meal in the name of corporate
profits.
We are the good guys, and
it's high time we stood up for that fact and put our collective
shoulder to the wheel of history. It's time we stopped pleading
with the larger Christian culture not to label us "Satanists,"
and started boldly defining ourselves to the world and advancing
a Wiccan agenda that goes way beyond "Please don't persecute
us!"
And so we must fight. We must
work. We must struggle. We must abandon the inner nostalgia
that has crippled our political power, and attack the outer
forces of nostalgia that threaten to shape our reality into
a post-nuclear-holocaust, Judeo-Christian/Islamic Apocalypse
desert. In small ways and large ways – from "coming
out of the broom closet" to our friends and coworkers,
to legislating for the environment, to running for President
and beyond – we must heed the call to action, take back
the reigns of society, and, as those in possession of higher
knowledge and clear vision have always done in times of great
social upheaval, we must lead our species past this present
moment of global crisis. We must use our minds and hearts,
our bodies and magicks to create a world worthy of our Goddess
and our highest ideals – not just as Wiccans, but as
human beings.
Authors Details: Escaping"Wiccan
Escapism" Esra Free Web
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From 'WICCA 404: Advanced Goddess Thealogy' |
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