Reflections on Sand Talk

Following the recommendation of Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen I picked up Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World ny Tyson Yunkaporta a while back. These are my immediate reflections and thoughts on finishing it.

It took me some time to work through. Part of that was the material is dense in what it brought up for me to think and reflect on. Another is that I was consistently making notes because Yunkaporta’s style brings those thoughts up and trying to catch them can be hard. I may go back through the book sometime down the road and not take notes and just experience the book. However, each time I engaged with it I felt like a dozen little threads of thought erupt with each chapter so I wanted to wrangle at least some of those thoughts.

Something I really appreciate about the book is that its yarns are not simple, straightforward, or easily able to be bullet pointed -except when they are. I kept coming back with every story thinking on the stories that infuse my own life -that of the Nordic Gods, my Ancestors, and the vaettir. The stories of the place I live, and the names and stories of the Beings who lived here long before my Ancestors. Like the stories that infuse his life and understanding I found relating to his stories and yarns through my own.

Yunkaporta asks us to take some heavy, deep, and equally light-hearded and amused looks at ourselves. In doing this, in embracing his way of speaking/writing, and reflecting as I yarned through the book with him, I found a lot of affirmation in my own path as a Heathen, from the way I understand how it unfolds in worldview and the direction it goes. It was also cool to see different cross-currents in thought and direction between our worldviews.

For starters just the concept of yarning as a way of co-creating, co-weaving, if you will, knowledge and understanding, has so many implications for a path where weaving and carving is an active and ongoing co-creative process with the Ginnreginn. Urðr is definitely reflected in yarning. What Yunkaporta calls a yarn between people we might also call a saga or even þing. Yarning and sharing a saga or sitting down to a þing is a co-creative and collaborative working that has certainly changed through time and yet has remained similar enough that we can recognize it today.

The process of encoding meaning through carving, umpan, we call rísta. It is to carve. Umpan is also used to mean writing, now, and rísta easily fits this as well. Much as with umpan, rísta brings the symbolic language to bear to bring and communicate meaning, and to change the carver and who observes and interacts with the carving.

Like the symbols he and the us-twos have brought forward, the Runes are living symbols, because, as with the Aboriginal symbols, the Runes are vaettir.

Much like our own experiences as Heathens, the Aboriginals do not just bring in new ways of understanding or doing things without vetting them. For them, as noted in p62 regarding the ceremony to “open” that first headstone, shaped by multiple Elders and family members, incorporating older elements of the traditional mourning process that had fallen into disuse. The demotic is not a sudden acceptance or made on a whim, arbitrarily. Likewise, we do not just change how we do things. We weigh it against established lore, divination, and what makes sense for us to do with where and when we are, and what obligations and needs we have.

Something that Yunkaporta and the various folks who have contributed to the yarns in the book come to again and again is that we need to move into societies of transition. Our communities do need to share knowledge while maintaining their own unique systems grounded in the diverse landscapes they care for. That is what I and others in my Kindred and tribe are working to do. It is what we are doing at Crossing Hedgerows Sanctuary and Farm. We US Pagans and polytheists are in development of these societies now.

He hits this especially hard here:

“I have previously talked about civilized cultures losing collective memory and having to struggle for thousands of years to gain full maturity and knowledge again, unless they have assistance. But that assistance does not take the form of somebody passing on cultural content and ecological wisdom. The assistance I’m talking about comes from sharing patterns of knowledge and ways of thinking that will help trigger the ancestral knowledge hidden inside. The assistance people need is not in learning about Aboriginal Knowledge but in remembering their own.” pp 144

Yes, absolutely this. I consider Runework, seiðr, spá, taufr, and other such things to be part of it as much as hearth cultus, Ancestral veneration, worship of and communication with with the Ginnreginn, and spiritwork. This is ongoing work: relationship-building, knowledge-building, spirit-building we are doing with the Ginnreginn, and part of doing that is building good relationships with the lands we live on and in.

Heathens here in the US once operated primarily from the locus of ‘if it is not written down it did not exist’, and it is a blessing this is changing. More, Heathens are taking inspiration and understanding of the lore as a jumping off point and perhaps a map, but we, we Heathens and the Ginnreginn, are the arbiters of our relationship together. This includes the world around us. We are coming out of the supremacy of the pen and printer and into the full appreciation of all our faculties.

He says “Kinship-mind is a way of improving and preserving memory in relationships with others. If you learn something with or from another person, this knowledge now sits in the relationship between you. You can access the memory of it best if you are together, but if you are separated you can recall the knowledge by picturing the other person or calling out their name. This way of thinking and remembering is not limited to relationships with people.” pp148-149

This immediately reminds me of Odin’s interactions with and ongoing relationship with Mimir, Saga, Loki, and other Gods. He maintains ongoing relationships with each, drawing wisdom and being the way through which inspiration reaches us through His interaction with Them. If Odin is the Utterer and Inspirer, then it is through Wisdom (Mimir), Stories (Saga), Creativity (Loki), Knowledge (Vafþrúðnir; His Name means “Mighty Weaver”) and so on.

“In Aboriginal worldviews, relationships are paramount in knowledge transmission. There can be no exchange or dialogue until the protocols of establishing relationships have taken place. Who are you? Where are you from? Where are you going? What is your true purpose here? Where does the knowledge you carry come from, and who shared it with you? What are the applications and potential impacts of this knowledge on this place? What impacts has it had on other places? What other knolwedge is it related to? Who are you to be saying these things?” pp149

It is worth pointing out that most of those Odin meets with regularly are relatives or closely related to Him in some way. Mimir is His Uncle, Saga His Wife’s Handmaiden, Lok His Blood-Brother, and Vafþrúðnir while not directly related is one He seeks to test His knowledge and mettle against.

“In our world nothing can be known or even exist unless it is in relation to other things. Critically, those things that are connected are less important than the forces of connection between them. We exist to form these relationships, which make up the energy that holds creation together. When knowledge is patterned within these forces of connection, it is sustainable over deep time.” p149-150.

Yes, and this is true of the Ginnreginn, the Runevaettir, and Urðr Itself. It is true of ourselves and our relationships with one another. It is true of ourselves and our relationship to this world.

There are five different ways in the Aboriginal way of thinking in his yarn (pp 150-152):

Kinship-mind.

Story-mind.

Dreaming-mind.

Ancestor-mind.

Pattern-mind.

He advises in pp 173 to come up with our own words for these.

“They are not capitalized because I don’t want them to become buzzwords absorbed into the marketplace. There are no trademarks in this knowledge. It is not specific to any single cultural group; instead, it belongs to everyone. You should come up with your own words for these ways of thinking if you decide to use them. You should alter them to match your own local environment and culture. This is all open-source knowledge, so use it like Linux software to build what you need to build for a sustainable life. If you want to do this you can use the symbol and your hand now to work through a logic sequence that will help you understand holism and enable you to come to Turtle story later on.

He goes on to yarn at length about how we can develop ways of knowing, understanding, co-creating. The entire book is this exploration. It encourages the reviving, embracing, and developing of our worldview. It encourages us to embrace old and new ways of understanding and knowledge. It encourages us to bring our relationship to the Ginnreginn and so, the World we inhabit and the Worlds around us, to the fore. In living in this way, he puts forward, we can save the World.

I found Sand Talk hopeful, insightful, and utterly useful for anyone willing to sit and yarn with Tyson Yunkaporta for a while. It is well worth the time. It is my hope that more Heathens, Nordic Pagans, and Nordic animists embrace this more holistic, and integrated way of being.

Patreon Poem/Prayer/Song 41: For Djehuti

If you want to submit a request for a prayer, poem, or song to be written to you privately or to be posted on this blog or my Patreon for a God, Ancestor, or spirit, sign up for the Ansuz and above level here on my Patreon.

This was requested by Emily for Djehuti.

---

O Djehuty, Ever-Learning

May I never stop learning

O Djehuty, Bargainer

May I bargain well

O Djehuty, First Among the Ogdoad

May I know and respect my place

O Djehuty, Ever-Curious

May I always be curious

O Djehuty, Lord of Time

May I be judicious with my time

O Djehuty, Author of Authors

May works be well-received

O Djehuty, Lord of Writing

May my writing excel

O Djehuty, Strong of Appearances

May my presence be powerful

O Djehuty, The One Who Has Seized Through Victories

May I be victorious

O Djehuty, Lord of Wisdom

May I be wise

Blessed, blessed, blessed

Your Name, Your Countenance, Your Presence

O Lord Djehuty!

Patreon Topic 5: Working With Wildly Different Paths

If you want to submit a topic you would like me to write on for this blog or my Patreon, sign up for the Uruz or Thurisaz level or above here on my Patreon.

From my first Ansuz supporter comes this topic:

“So how might you work with a student or a client from a wildly different path? How do you, or do you at all, incorporate your own experience with Celtic deities, with Anubis, and with ceremonial magic into your current work and path? To what degree is that breadth helpful, to what degree is it harmful?”

The problem in speaking in generalities is that there’s likely to be some time down the road where something will come my way to challenge it. That being said, if someone is coming to me with a Heathen or Northern Tradition Pagan specific issue at hand I will generally stick to Heathen and NT specific responses. Likewise, if someone comes to me with Celtic or Kemetic-specific questions I will direct them to resources there. My worship of and experiences with Celtic and Kemetic Gods are part of my everyday life. I have worshiped Gods from these culture groups longer than I have the Heathen and NT Gods. My ceremonial magic background generally shows up in some forms of how I do galdr, and sometimes how I approach things relating to magic.

My experiences with Celtic Gods are primarily devotional, and except for Anubis and a little bit with Bast, so are my experiences with the Kemetic Gods. Most of my work history with Anubis is specific to the work He has given me to do as His priest. Since so much of that is one-on-one with the Dead, usually the general Dead than Ancestors, it does not come up a lot with others. Likewise, my work with ceremonial magic was quite specific to working especially hand-in-hand with Michael at first and then with planetary intelligences for the most part. Most of the things I have learned and experienced from my time before Heathenry are background now, or show up in certain ways, eg a galdr method I work with is similar to how I was taught to intone during LBRP and similar ceremonial magic rites.

The way I might work with a student or client from a wildly different path is:

1. Is the person solidly committed to learning about or committed to this wildly different path? If someone is just trying to find solid ground I could be useful to them. The person may be fully new to a given path and just need a guiding hand, even if it is to someone that isn’t me but is a good person for them within a given religious or magical community.

2. Have they followed up with a spiritual specialist within the tradition or path that they want to study? Are there any people within that tradition or path that could do this job better than me? Some folks are being put on wholly new paths and need direction from a useful source, so as a diviner sometimes I get folks who do not really have a religious, magical, or even spiritual community to interact with because building that is actually their project.

3. Do I have the information, guidance, etc that they need? “Is this actually my stuff to teach, to pass or guide them on?” is a good question to ask. I’m not a Celtic-oriented person, and while I am a priest of Anubis, most of my knowledge in Kemetic religion is oriented around Him and Bast. I have not done ceremonial magic on a regular basis in years. I know enough to know I am not an expert in Celtic reconstructionist/revivalist religions, and that so far as a Kemetic priest is concerned, I have only have expert level experience in very specific areas. My knowledge and experience has limits and I need to respect them for the good of the person and myself.

The breadth of my experience is useful in that I at least have a decent enough grasp of resources within the community to guide folks to solid sources of information. I know what I am and am not qualified to teach or give instruction on. So, in this way it is quite helpful because I know where my boundaries lie.

If a student or client in a wildly different religion or path from mine needed to work with me, specifically me, for whatever reason, it would likely be with me as a kind of helpmeet providing input as requested or needed. As a diviner I have little issue working with folks regardless of their path because the client knows going in that what I am doing is facilitating communication between them, the Runes, and Whoever the client wants information from, for, or about.

I would not really say that this is harmful from my angle, but from a student looking for a teacher to give more broad lessons it might not be as helpful as they would like. Since I generally do not teach about Celtic or Kemetic religion, or Kemetic or ceremonial magic, I do not worry too much about it. Given the divination systems I work with most are the Runes and tarot, along with the occasional other divination method, eg smoke/fire scrying, my methods are usually flexible or useful enough to other Gods that They will work with the system I am most comfortable with and give accurate and useful answers through them. The harm would be is if I misrepresented my knowledge, understanding, sources, and so on. The harm would be if I knew I wasn’t an expert or even well versed in a given subject and tried teaching on it anyhow.

The #DoMagick Challenge Day 18

Berkanan (Wikimedia Commons)

Today I did galdr with Berkanan.

I cleansed with Fire, both myself and the new ash cane/staff that I was gifted with by my mother today.  I held on to the cane until it was time to begin the work.  I set it aside after its cleansing and did not touch it again until after the work was fully complete.  I ate before doing the Runework tonight, as I have to get some sleep and then wake for work tonight.  It made getting into headspace easier in one sense, in not being distracted by need for food, but also a bit harder in another, in that sometimes doing this work an hour or two after eating tends to give me results that make me feel a little less grounded.  Still, it ended up working well as the work I did with the Rune was still quite fruitful.

In the first round of galdr I found myself in a small home.  Perhaps a cottage.  Around me were herbs.  The home smelled earthy.  There were bunches of herbs hanging around the beams of the roof, thatch above it.  There were shavings of a tree in a bowl on a table in front of me.  An older woman was working at it, sitting on a chair.  There was an empty one across from her.  She was working at something with a knife, shaving away bark.  She gestured to me with her open hand and went back to her work.  In her heart was a kettle, a good-sized black one.  She took it down and poured the steaming water into the bowl of shavings, and pushed it towards me.  I drank it, and I felt ease come into my body.  My spine relaxed, shoulders eased.  She smiled and nodded, knowing what her tea was doing to me.

In the second round of galdr I was in a forest.  About me were trees of varying age.  One was cut down near the trunk, and from it a new tree was sprouting.  It had a soft, high pitch voice, and it said “Hi!” to me.  As I started the next part of the round, before me another birch tree unrolled a long, scroll of bark.  As I looked upon it, scratches appeared, Runes and images.  Then I was back in the small home with the old woman, and there were shavings of that bark being put into a drink and I drank it.  I felt at ease, comforted and comfortable.

In the final round of galdr the Fire between my legs was a lamp and I had the sensation of giving birth.  It was a series of undulating fierce pulls, fierce pushes, and a cry.  Then darkness.  When I began the next part of the final round, I had a flurry of images and sensations hit me, including some close to what I experienced earlier in the previous two rounds, and the sensation of bones breaking, being set and held in place.  The final part of the final round I saw Runes being written wrong.  I found myself correcting Them, laying Them down rightly.  Writing Them on birch bark as it unrolled before me, perhaps same birch bark scroll from earlier, and the old woman saying “It is the doing the thing right, of taking knowledge and applying it right!”  She was over my shoulder, pointing at the scroll “You see here?  You see it done wrong, now do it right.  This is knowledge!  Knowledge before you, burnt into bark!  Pass it on!  This is only way way, and you must pass it on!  Say the words, right them yes, but remember the words and pass them on!”

I came almost swimming back to my full realization of my body as I opened my eyes again to the candle flame.  It took me several moments of deep breathing to catch myself back up to being fully here, present in this body.

I did my prayers of thanks to Rúnatýr and the Runevaettir.  I cleansed with the candle and prayed prayers of thanks to the Eldest Ancestor.  Now, for some sleep

Link to the Daily Ritual for the Challenge.

#DoMagick

A Polytheist Reflection and Response to Convenience, Consumption, and Peak Oil Part 5

Having read, watched, and listened to coverage of COP21, I have to say I am utterly disappointed.  Not only were no binding agreements made, what was agreed upon will not effectively address the issues facing the world.  Per the COP21 website:

In 2015 COP21, also known as the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, will, for the first time in over 20 years of UN negotiations, aim to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate, with the aim of keeping global warming below 2°C.

It failed.  There are aims, but nothing binding.  There is plenty of signed paper, but no promises.  There are plenty of goals, but no ambition to see them through.  Further, it gutted a lot of the binding agreements by placing things like this in the preamble.

KANDI MOSSETT: Right. So, there’s an article. When there’s language in the article, that’s legally binding language. And what they’ve actually done is taking out reference to indigenous peoples’ rights from the article and putting it only into the preamble, which is not legally binding. The same for human rights, the same for food sovereignty. There’s just different things that have happened in the text that—intergenerational equity is also in the preamble, so a lot of the youth are very upset as to what’s happening. And I think it’s kind of a shame that we’ve—actually, at the 21st COP, more than a shame, it’s a crime that we’ve taken a step backwards by taking out the rights of indigenous peoples.

 Not only are there no easy answers, there is no plan for addressing climate change on a global level.  So too, there is no global plan for addressing peak oil.  There are only a few places where peak oil and climate change are being actively addressed on a regional scale.  The same with a State or provincial scale.  The most action I have seen and continue to see addressing peak oil, and climate change is within local communities, whether these are tribes, clans, counties, cities, towns, intentional communities, or individual families.

It is incredibly easy to look at this failure of leadership and the impending impacts of peak oil and climate change, to read JMG’s latest piece summarizing what is facing us, and simply fall into despair. I am going to encourage anyone reading this not to do that.

Go to the Gods.  Go to the Ancestors.  Go to the vaettir.  Ask Them for help to do something to address this.  Go do magic.  Work magic to address this.  Go learn and study.  Put your hands to whatever you are able to do.  Organize where you can.  Do what is within your power to do. Do something with those emotions.  Do not let them sit idle.  Use them as fuel.

Grow what you can where you can.  Preserve knowledge wherever you can.  Distribute knowledge where you can.  Learn a skill or learn a trade if you can.  Every single bit helps.

The idea that we will not be able to get out of the Long Descent without casualties has come up a couple of times in the comments in this series of posts.  In every documentary on Youtube I have watched, the idea population decline will, at some point, come up.  It seems expected that we will somehow be able to keep on preserving our ways of life that allow us in America to use 25% of the world’s resources when we are 5% of the overall population of the Earth.  It seems expected that we can just ‘run things on renewables’ when it comes to Q&As at the end of a good many of these lectures, some desperate variation on the bargaining aspect of the 5 Stages of Grief.  When we haven’t invested shit into our infrastructure, into renewables, or into any other way of life but the ones folks are living right now.

People are going to die because of climate change and peak oil, and there is absolutely nothing that we can do about it.  Whether because of the hubris and neglect of corporations, the incredibly tight controls or severe lack in industry standards with the government, laziness or panic or inaction on the part of the average citizens, our opportunity to stem the tide of these things passed us by well before Morning in America was the rallying cry of the Reagan administration.  Carter tried to be straightforward and honest with the American people on these matters, and he was a one-term president, mocked and roundly criticized for his stances.  No one has tried this and won since.  We are now faced with a world which will see us in the Long Descent as John Michael Greer calls it, the Bumpy Plateau as Richard Heinberg calls it, or the Collapse, as Chris Martenson and Jared Diamond call it.  The end of cheap, abundant fossil fuel is coming, climate change is occurring, and yet we still can affect change on the local level.

I ran across this idea from Michael Ruppert across several of his lectures:

Let us say that there were people on the Titanic who knew that an iceberg was going to hit it, and the Titanic would sink.  These people know there are not enough lifeboats, but that there is time enough to make some in preparation for the disaster that is coming.  There are three kinds of reactions to these people.  The first are those who say “Oh you’re just a doom-sayer.  I’m going to go back to the bar for a drink.”  The second are those who panic, wide-eyed and run around crying out “What do I do?  What do I do?” but do not address the problem.  Then there are third, who say “Let’s get to work on building some lifeboats” and get started working on it.  As with Ruppert, I suggest we work with other lifeboat builders and not waste our time with the first two groups of people.

This means ceasing to fight with those that think global warming is a fraud.  This means not arguing with those who adamantly do not accept the reality of peak oil.  This means ceasing to waste time on folks who want to talk, but not do.

This means getting proactive wherever you can in your life and community to address peak oil and climate change.  This means doing whatever research, reskilling, growing, learning, accumulating of resources, and making community ties now wherever you are able as you are able.  This means reorienting your life in whatever ways that you can so the Long Descent is easier to deal with.

This means that there are people out there for whom it is not worth your time to try to save.  Not that they are intrinsically better or worse than you.  It means that these people will be an impediment to you doing things to actively work in ways that will better you, your family, and/or your community.  On a practical level, the people not willing to build lifeboats with you are simply not worth your time to try to save.  You can love your family, your friends, your neighbors, and they all can be impediments or allies in the way of where you need to go, and what you need to do, to ensure you, yours, and future generations are able to survive.  These are not easy things to think about, and I appreciate that, but if you have put off thinking about them, now is the time.

What I am not saying is “you should not worry about the non-lifeboat builders” or “you should be totally okay with this”.  I have folks in my family who want to pretend that everything will be fine, or technology will find a way.  You know what?  I don’t stop loving them.  I don’t stop wanting them to end their addiction to oil, to join a community effort, even if it isn’t mine, to address peak oil and climate change.  I don’t stop wanting them to change their mind, but I also realize that, after a certain point, all I am doing is wasting our collective time by trying to get them on board.

Hell, in talking with my grandparents on my mother’s side, both realize just how hard of a time ahead we have.  All I can do at this point is ask as many questions as I can of them for how they got through the hard times in their lives.  To ask them how their parents got through the Depression and how they got through the Oil Shocks.  I pray that I get as many old tools and machines that my grandpa collected from garage, estate, and auction sales, as I can.  It’s my hope to put these still-functioning tools to work again.

I cannot offer hope or comfort, outside of “We have time to prepare” and “Better ways of living with the world are possible, and within our ability to do.”  With the coming Long Descent coming, I find comfort in the words of Arundhati Roy:
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way.  On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

The work of addressing peak oil and climate change is working to hear these messages, and put them in to action.  We have work to do, and each will need to decide in what ways their energy and time are best used.  I pray that your efforts succeed.  I pray they pave the way for others to succeed, for all of us to survive, and thrive.

A Polytheist Reflection and Response to Convenience, Consumption, and Peak Oil Part 4

I had not planned a fourth part to this series, however, I was hit by something as I was sitting and experiencing this beautiful rendition of The Sound of Silence.  I went back to thinking about the series of posts that I have been writing lately on consumerism and peak oil.  I was thinking in how my father and I were sitting in the basement while he was smoking after he teared up while listening to it on Youtube.  He explained to me that he had had a lot of friends buried to that song, and it occurred to me to ask him a few things, among them, what songs he wanted to have at his funeral, and if it would be okay if I kept his skull.  This song and yes were among his answers.

We have such an odd relationship with death and endings in this country.  While there is a cyclical nature to my religion, there is a linear one in my father’s, and the predominant mythological/cultural narratives American society tells itself are, likewise, linear, for instance, the myth of progress.  It is very hard for folks to envision things past a certain point.  It’s not the main reason I connect The Sound of Silence to my work with peak oil, though.  No, what I connect with is one the overarching messages I get from the song.  That our things overtake our sense of self, connection, community, even the place of our Gods.  The lines that stick with me the hardest are these:

And in the naked light I saw, ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never shared, and no one dared
To stir the sound of silence

and this one:

And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they’d made
And the sign flashed its warning in the words that it was forming
And the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls, and whispered in the sounds of silence

This song sticks in my craw, especially lately, especially because of the dearth of silence I see in the needed conversations on peak oil and climate change.  That we have become overtaken by our things, that our need to have things have supplanted our need for connection.  That the very means by which we enjoy this very song, or as you, the readers read the words, or I as I type them, is all part of the collective death knell of modern human civilization.  This is so discomforting, that, like conversations on death, it is a taboo, a thing we dare not speak or give word to, lest we sound crazy or we dare to step out of line and suggest that another world is not only possible, but absolutely fucking necessary.  It is taboo, echoing in the well of silence.

The other reason this post kind of spoke up and said “Hey, write me,” is because of a comment from PSVL on Part 3.  While I did address e in the comments, between being prompted by The Sounds of Silence and the comment itself, I felt that e was right.  We do need to talk more about folks who aren’t able-bodied facing a future in which cheap, abundant fossil fuels are no longer available, and as a result, neither will our life-dependent medications.  Some of this will be retread of the comments, and some will be me responding having stewed on things a bit.

I wanted to respond to eir’s first and last points to start with:

While I think this is all good, I’m still utterly unimpressed with–and am downright horrified by–the attitudes of JMG, and certain other anti-capitalists we know of in refusing to address the situation of folks like yourself and myself who rely upon medications produced by corporate capitalism for our very lives, that (at least in my case) I won’t ever be able to wean myself away from, short of a miracle, and those are thin on the ground these days. By JMG, when I brought this up, I was told “Well, everyone has to die sometime”; and by the other, I got outrage that I’d ask that question, was told I’d be taken care of, and then was given no details or anything on how that would actually take place in his self-congratulation over how caring and compassionate he was toward poor non-able-bodied sods like me (in ideal, anyway).

and

The amount of privilege that those who practically glorify this matter and their “responsible” lifestyle in response to it enjoy by being able-bodied (at least for the moment) in these discussions is quite frankly disgusting.

I wish someone would actually address that.

No one from the Peak Oil movement that I know of or consistently refer to takes any kind of pleasure or glory from this being the future.  We can, however, enjoy the processes we go through to prepare for a power-down future, and make the Long Descent as pleasant as we are able in the meantime.  We can connect with community, create art, learn skills, write books, teach, and pass on knowledge.  To my mind, it would be better to glorify this responsible lifestyle than to pretend that the one that is touted by American society as ideal is at all sustainable or has a future.

I more or less stand by my original answer to em in this regard.  There is no answer for us coming from established sources.  Since we cannot control funding, research, dialogue, or the larger-scope top-down issues of addressing peak oil and climate change, or the associated complications of peak oil, climate change, and the therapies, medication, and other things that keep us alive, there are only local-level answers I could hope to give. Unless we do work on trying to find replacements for our medications now, or if we can attain some kind of homestasis in a sustainable manner that allows us to live in a powered-down future, a good number of us are outright screwed.  The truth of the matter is, that I don’t think anyone in the Peak Oil communities, or the anarchists, the permaculturalists, the government, researchers, or anyone else for that matter, has an answer for people who are this dependent on medication, therapies, and so on that are only available to us because of the energy output of fossil fuels, and all the industries it is used to run and make products for.  What methods there may be to address our needs in the face of peak oil and climate change, such as alternative therapies, herbal medicines, and tradition-specific medicinal approaches, may well have to be approached from a trial-and-error perspective rather than a rigorous scientific one if things speed up quicker than I am anticipating.

Addressing this from a different angle: what happens to the home healthcare industry (of which I am a bottom tier worker) when the downward slope of the Long Descent makes itself apparent?  It will disappear.

The result of that is nothing short of horrible.  There are clients, consumers, and patients within this industry that fully rely on people like me to give them care, to feed them, clean them, and so on.  What happens when the means by which we are employed vanish?  Some folks will soldier on, doing what they can until they have nothing left to give.  Most will leave.  This will leave the government and families a couple of options, assuming these folks have any family alive.  They can take them into their homes, set up institutions or like apparatus again, at least for a while, or leave them where they are.  Not an easy thought, and certainly not something I like to write about.  However, there we are.  Unless communities start coming together and addressing climate change and peak oil now, and addressing the issue of access to healthcare, this is the horrible reality we will be facing.

I’m paid about a dollar above what a crew member at McDonald’s is paid.  When I/my community gets land and we’re established, my plan is to leave this industry.  Not because the people I served don’t deserve the services, not because they are lesser than I, but because my tribe, my people come first, and the kind of work that will be required to make such a thing work, much less be successful, is a full-time job.

For those who stay in this industry, with as little investment as there is in health care, things will get even worse if communities do not actively come together to bolster and improve these services.  Many of the local movements I addressed in Part 3 may be able to address needs on a local level if they plan for it. I don’t, however, think they will be able to address all needs.

Please, though, do not think I am giving folks a pass on this.  This does need to be addressed.  Taking care of the folks who cannot care for themselves is a humane thing to do, and it requires our consideration for how best to do so.  It is also not a cruelty to say “These are our limitations due to budget, space, etc. What can we do to solve this problem?  Who can we look to for help?  How can we best serve these members of the community?  If we lack the means to serve these people effectively, what can we do?”  That, I think, is key: these aren’t just clients when this goes from a company and its employees doing a job into a community coming together to work on how best to serve these people.  They’re community members.  They have Gods who care for them, Ancestors who care for them, and live among the vaettir.  I am no less than an able-bodied person for my diabetes.  Likewise, those I serve in my current job capacity are no less a person than I.

I have a vested interest in seeing non-able-bodied and disabled folks taken care of.  I’m a disabled person (diabetes, asthma, ADD), and so is my son and my wife.  People I care deeply for, who are chosen family and friends are non-abled and disabled.  Hell, if my tics (which I’m now taking an anti-seizure medication for) get any worse, I may need a lot of help someday.  It’s in my interest and that of my families’ interests, and going outward from there, in my community’s best interests to have a vibrant, viable, and sustainable community that can care for its own.

The basic questions of infrastructure, and the points I raised in the previous three posts will still be factors that will need to be addressed in some manner.  Without these addressed, the job of those who remain or become caretakers, home healthcare workers, and so on, will be that much harder.  Transportation, medication, and compensation will all need to be looked at on a local level.  The same with the costs of healthcare, short and long-term.

We will have to take a hard look at what we can afford to do with what we have where our communities are.  We will need to do this now and in the future in a world where resources are already hard to find, becoming harder and more environmentally and financially costly to find, refine, and produce. We wouldn’t be seeing companies looking to hydraulic fracturing, deep-water drilling, arctic oceans, or tar sands oil if we had a whole lot of low-hanging fruit left.  The EROEI (Energy Returned On Energy Invested) doesn’t make sense without high oil prices, and all of them are incredibly environmentally destructive to boot.  Look at the BP Oil Spill in 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico, the ongoing damage to Alberta, CA with the tar sands strip mining and extraction, and the ongoing damage being done in the Marcellus Shale area of PA.  The only reason any of these more expensive, and thus lower EROEI methods of fossil fuel extraction, refinement, and use, have gotten any traction was the incredible explosion of oil prices and dropping supply.

When/if a big crash comes during our lifetimes, we’ll be some of the first casualties, as soon as the last of the insulin in the fridge runs out. Simple as that, unfortunately. Nothing anyone has ever said on these topics convinces me of any other possibility, because no one has ever floated any other possibility (other than the idiots I heard several years back who said “That’s why we’re raising cattle, so I can go on beef insulin.” Uhh…unless industrial levels of beef slaughter are taking place, not enough insulin will be produced, dummy, to sustain your life, and your little herd of twenty cows will not last you even a year for that) which is remotely viable.

As I said in my comment, I’m of the opinion/understanding it is not a matter of if, but when. I see one of two general outcomes.  The first, is that the economic house of cards comes to crash and all the lack of investment our country has collectively made in its infrastructure comes home to roost, as we’re seeing in places near where I live such as Flint, MI or the poisoning of the Kalamazoo River by Enbridge Energy.  The other is that peak oil will slowly suck what life remains from the country via increasing energy costs exacerbated by our lack of investment in infrastructure, and lack of preparedness for a powered-down future. I believe a combination of these two scenarios over a period of 20-50 years, maybe longer if more folks get on-board, is most likely, since the economy is almost entirely dependent on fossil fuels to do anything.

The only way that massive volumes of insulin are able to made is because of the meat and medical industry.  We can only do so much on a local level, especially in a powered-down future where the fossil fuels that helped a lot of folks to live goes away.  There’s only so much folks are going to be able to do, grow, or make.

And that you, I, and all of the polytheists in the U.S. and the world can’t actually do anything to stop or change this situation, no matter how local and active and right-relational we get with other things related to this situation might be, makes me absolutely angry and hopeless over this situation.

I liken this situation to Fimbulvinter and Ragnarök.  This is a situation that may have once been preventable, but it is one that we now face without that ability.  We can look forward, grim or joyful, but It is coming to meet us and we, It, through the weaving of Wyrd.  The big difference between The Long Descent and Ragnarök is that the Aesir, Vanir, Jotun, our Ancestors, and the landvaettir are with us should we be willing to ally, and will help us face this future if we are willing to do what we can where we can.  We’re not just living for our survival.  We will help to leave a world in which Lif and Lifthrasir can survive and thrive in.

So, I make of my anger, and times where hopelessness hits me, an offering to my Gods, Ancestors, vaettir, and communities. I make of my education on how to live better with and upon Jörð and my other Gods, my Ancestors, and the vaettir, as an offering.  I make of the work I put my hands to as an offering.  I will keep going on, and do what I can to this end for as long as I can.  It is my duty.

A Polytheist Reflection and Response to Convenience, Consumption, and Peak Oil Part 3

It is easy to understand why convenience is currently winning the hearts and minds of American consumers.  This has much to do with lower upfront cost to the consumer, while the consumer is able to put it out of their minds that much of the convenience we expect and pay for comes at the cost of someone else’s life, livelihood, home, and abysmally low pay or slavery.  Follow any given ‘cheap’ product, and you will find a pipeline of suffering for the animals and plants involved.  Look at any major clothing line or electronics company.  The neodymium mining poisoning Inner Mongolia, the gold in Nigeria in which there are children going blind and infertile, countless countries whose citizens labor for Nike, Gap, and Apple at slave wages or are slaves.  Lots of people are dying just to get a bit of the stuff out of the Earth, make a piece of clothing, or make another electronic gadget that feeds into these systems that keep products cheap for the consumers while costing a lot of people their lives, land, and sovereignty.  It happens here, too, whether you look at New York City’s garment district, falling wages for what once were solidly middle-class jobs, or the paltry amount, around $39,000 or less, that a lot of chicken farmers make per year.

The costs are hidden from the American consumer in terms of jobs, too.  Think about it. When was the last time you heard of a cobbler?  When was the last time you knew the person or the people who made your shoes?  Your clothes?

Resilience does not just mean that the system is preserved in a healthy way, but that people, and the environment are too.  Resilience in our own relationships, economically and personally, mean that we need to reweave our interdependent lives with one another here.  Recognizing that the child labor of a gold mine is wrong; it is another thing to divest ourselves from it as consumers.  Recognizing that there is blood on the diamond trade is one thing, but refusing to buy diamonds at all is a whole other story.  Recognizing that we do not want to support sweatshops or we want to buy American is easy to say, but it is in supporting better ways wherever we can that real change is made.  Resilience requires actions to preserve not only our relationships, but our own integrity as well.  Resilience is an active choice, an activity, and a way of living.  So too, is convenience.

This issue comes up quite a bit when the conversation is about something like the consumption of meat.  Most of these conversation are, themselves, red herrings.  What all of these various issues boil down to, is that so much of human labor and what used to be a lot of animal labor, are now done by increasingly convenient, complex machines which are able to be made because of cheap, abundant fossil fuels.

Think about it.

Whether the fumes choking cities, the heating of our planet via CO2, the plastic choking the oceans, the mounds of human, animal, and plant grief in places all over the world, the only thing that allows these cogs to move at all is cheap, abundant fossil fuels.

The only reason the meat industries are any kind of threat to the environment are because of the fossil fuel powered trade, transport, and machines that allow for the CAFOs and other industrial food/feedstock/animal raising/slaughtering operations to remain economically viable. The entire life cycle of the meat industry, the agricultural industry, and countless others, including the aforementioned on-demand delivery services, depend on tenuous, fragile systems.  From the truckloads of meat, plants, etc. that crisscross the country, wrapped in petroleum-derived plastics, shipped using incredible amounts of diesel delivered on petroleum-derived/made asphalt, kept cold using natural gas, coal, or oil-powered refrigeration technology in the holding areas, distribution centers, supermarkets, and consumers’ freezers/refrigerators, then cooked by means usually powered by coal, natural gas, or oil.  Keep in mind as well that the gas, coal, and oil that keeps the economy and trade moving, that lubricates the countless machines of capitalism, consumerism, trade, and industry, are all looked for, found, extracted, mined, processed, and refined, then transported and burnt, largely by diesel-powered machines.

Meat production itself is not the problem.  Rather, it is the means by which this incredibly wasteful cycle of goods, services, and means of production are kept afloat. That doesn’t mean that our meat consumption isn’t a problem, but it pales in comparison to the things that make such consumption economically viable and reduce the ability of smaller farmers, ranchers, and growers to support themselves and their communities. It’s the same cycle that enables the wholesale destruction of the environment in places that mine for rare earth minerals, like Nigeria and Inner Mongolia for things like gold and neodynium in order to continue cycles of consumption of things like the very laptop I’m typing on. None of the components that make this thing up, nor the power it uses to remain on, or the Internet itself, is without deep costs to the environment.

If we want a healthier relationship with meat, some peoples’ options are to simply stop eating it. That’s fine. Some simply cannot do that. A healthier relationship with meat doesn’t mean that all meat eaters just wholesale stop eating meat, it means developing better relationships with it, supporting local farmers/ranchers, and businesses that employ folks close to home and close down more of that big cycle of consumption I mentioned above.  If I want be healthier, my option is not to stop taking my medication right now.  It means I need to develop healthier relationships with my body and food, and work to get off the medication I can.  If we want healthier relationships between farmers, ranchers, markets, crafts, industries and the people they are made for and use them, we must make the effort as people regardless on which part of the relationship we are, to make things better so we all are more resilient, and our communities more stable.

Convenience today is predicated on cheap, abundant fossil fuels.  Peak oil won’t just bring challenges to our economy, it will stop its ability to move and expand.  Given how brittle our international economic and trade systems are, back in 2008 what nearly took down the house of cards was a housing and financial bubble combined with the soaring price of crude oil. That was a warning that should have shook all of us out of the mindset that we could avoid dealing with the problem of capitalism’s need for exponential growth to sustain itself, and the resultant use of energy to make that happen.

Peak oil is the bar that sets the hard limits to growth.  You cannot grow an economy at the scale we are used to if the economy cannot be empowered to function with cheap fossil fuels.  Peak oil is especially problematic for the United States, since we’ve given over almost all our transportation needs to diesel and gas powered vehicles, vehicles which deliver all of our goods, from food to medicine, from surgery supplies to toilet paper.  Our train system is deeply underfunded and barely adequate to deal with what is already on its rails.  Our bridges are falling apart, as are dams like this one, which is holding back water from 431,000 people in Texas.  We have basic infrastructure problems that need to be addressed.  My point here is not that we cannot address peak oil, but that top-down approaches from the federal government will not be adequate, and any response would be slow, at best.

What about regional responses?  With basic road funding here in Michigan taking the better part of a year just to approve funding (about half of this based on tax cuts, mind you, not raising revenues) on basic maintenance, there is little hope that there would be a top-down response commensurate with need, let alone enough to handle an emergency.  It is not that top-down approaches are not desirable, but that in all likelihood they will be too little too late, piecemeal, or simply lacking in their ability to deal with the situation.

So many of us who have chosen to deal with the problems of peak oil and climate change do so on the local level because that is where we can affect change the best on a practical scale.  It’s the permaculuralist that sets up shop down the road, growing food on their 2 acre plot.  It’s the charities, like Growing Hope and the Fair Food Network in Detroit, that increase peoples’ access to good, healthy food while teaching them how to grow it.  It’s the Transition Town Network, Reskilling Festivals, and Strawbale Studio that works on teaching folks how to do things, from arts and crafts, to making our own homes and growing our own food on a more local level.  These provide folks opportunities to make contacts who will sell to others who do not have the skills or space to do so.  It is not that peak oil is insurmountable, but that the ways our economy, industry, markets, crafts, and food production functions are inadequate to addressing the issues peak oil presents to us.

Peak oil represents a very stark choice.  We can keep trying to make this unsustainable way of life work for a little while longer, or we can learn to live with LESS (a term coined by JMG meaning Less Energy, Stimulation, and Stuff) and work towards a future in which our generation and those after have the abilities, skills, and resources to meet the challenges peak oil and climate change are going to bring.

This choice is why I am looking to engage in another way of living.  I am inspired by my animist and polytheist worldview to live in good Gebo with the world, with Jörð, Freyr, Gerda, Freya, our Ancestors, and the landvaettir.  I am inspired by my Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir to live better with this world, and to live with Them, and alongside Them, and help to bring forward a better future.  I am inspired by my animist and polytheist worldview and religion as a Northern Tradition Pagan and Heathen to align myself within this world and to this world in a way that benefits us both.  I am inspired by my work and role a Northern Tradition and Heathen shaman and priest to do these things as part of my duty to the Gods, Ancestors, vaettir, communities I serve, and the generations to come.  To not only be different in how I consume, but to be different in what I do, and how I give back to this world.

I view it as my duty to my best in this regard.  Duty to my Gods, to live well in the world, and within a community of folks dedicated to doing well by our Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir.  Duty to my Ancestors, to live well and help raise the new generations with care, and with the skills necessary to face peak oil, climate change, and the challenges they present us.  Duty to my vaettir, including the landvaettir with whom we will live upon, align and work, live with and build good relationships.  Duty to the Warrior Dead who gave Their lives so we could live, the Military Dead to honor Their sacrifices and to teach the future generations their stories so They are not forgotten, and the other vaettir with whom we share this world, that we may come into better alignment, and relation.

I have no illusion that I alone, or even a small community can stop climate change or peak oil, but we can address it within our spheres of influence.  My hope is that it inspires action in others, and ripples through the communities we touch and weave with.  At the least, the next generation we raise, inspire, and welcome will be better prepared to deal with the impacts of climate change, peak oil, and the challenges we have yet to see that will come from them.  At the most we can inspire and promote local resiliency and ties, a refocus of national action on these things, and perhaps worldwide change in how we address peak oil and climate change.  If nothing else, we will improve our small community’s lot while honoring and working in better concert with our Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir in this work.  I can think of no better reason to pursue these goals than that.

 

Part 1 of this series is here.

Part 2 of this series is here.

For other explorations of this topic, look here:

The Religious Implications of Peak Oil

Where is the Ground?

A Polytheist Reflection and Response to Convenience, Consumption, and Peak Oil Part 2

The challenge we face as a country in the face of peak oil and climate change is getting back to a more human-sized society.  A large part of the issue of getting things back to a manageable size is twofold: 1) we have a very poor concept of wealth in this country, and 2) convenience has eclipsed resilience in a big way.

In regards to our unhealthy view of wealth in this country, to start with, wealth is not money in a bank account.  It is an abundance of things of value.  Money is not value, but a measurement of value agreed upon as a representation of work.  Work is of value; money is given value to represent the value of goods, services, products, and labor rather than someone having to directly trade as in a barter system.  A good way to look at this is the Rune Fehu.

Fehu means ‘money, cattle, wealth’.  Cattle require land, and so, land is also a form of wealth, and the maintenance of a good herd of cattle is a means of sustaining wealth in the forms of cattle and land.  Likewise, the means to feed the herd, and so, the health of the land itself, is a form of wealth.  Resilience is bound up in wealth in many ways.  The first way is that resilience requires more investment and maintenance up front than convenience requires.  Another is that resilience provides a way for wealth itself to be maintained and grow in ways that sustain the production and maintenance of these sources of wealth.  Resilience in cattle-based land is making sure the herd does not overgraze, but eats its fill, and that it has enough nutrients in the soil and vegetation to provide for many generations of cattle, not just one.  Resilience in cattle-based land may require rotation of the animals, crops and foods sources.  Certain forms of resilient cattle-raising dispense with rotation, and cultivate the manure as a form of fertilizer, while working with the herd to maintain the integrity of the land.  Resilience may also require a culling every now and again to keep the herd manageable.  By contrast, convenience would require as many cattle as possible to be raised then slaughtered in a given timetable to maximize production and profit regardless of the destruction to the land, the pain to the cows, or the overproduction of the meat itself.

Resilient cattle-raising is not as convenient as on-site feedlot operations, but then, convenient ways of cattle raising come with deep drawbacks that have to be accounted for.  Convenience brings a great deal of challenges with it that resilient methods do not.  Among them are logistical challenges, sourcing, and securing the various production pipelines that assure that convenience remains so.  In CAFO operations the maximization of profit is extended at the risk of increase of infection in the animals.  To counteract this, animals are given antibiotics, both to increase resistance to disease, and increase muscle mass so there is more meat to sell come the slaughter.  This has a knock-on effect in two ways, since 70% of the recipients of antibiotics are farm animals.  One, it increases the rates of mutation and development of antibiotic resistant bacteria, and two, each layer of complexity provides an extra kink in the system that can develop deep problems. Enough cattle get fed an antibiotic at a low dose, and it can make the whole damned herd develop an antibiotic resistant bacteria that overcomes the treatment.  That bacteria could then kill parts of or the entire herd, and should that spread, could overcome other herds.  If it passes transmission to humans, it can than affect the local, and then State, and possibly national population.  There are people dying now because there are bacteria that have become resistant to last-effort antibiotics.

Resilient methods of cattle raising do not have this issue of breeding antibiotic resistant bacteria.  While antibiotic free cattle may succumb to disease, they do not have a constant low-level dose of exposure to antibiotics in their food or through regular injections that a given bacteria can become resistant to.  Would or will bacteria develop that will kill cattle? Sure, but not at the rates we see with antibiotic resistant strains, pushed forward by the cattle and other meat industries use of antibiotics in everything from feed to direct injections.  While resilient methods sacrifice money upfront for this, in the long run they provide a safeguard to herd and human alike. Other points of failure in this system is the supply of antibiotics themselves and all the infrastructure and support systems that go into manufacturing them. Another point of failure is the feed itself, with the fossil fuels that are used in growing, spraying, and transporting it to the cattle. Other points of failure can be found in all of the infrastructure and support systems that go into producing and delivering the feed upon which CAFO and other industrial meat operators depend upon to be profitable.

Convenience is more a method of exploiting wealth than it is of ensuring its survival or growth.  Methods such as on-demand services rely on entire networks of services to support them in the first place.  Look to any on-demand service whether it is Uber, Createspace or Lulu, Amazon.com or online food delivery services like Grubhub, OrderUp, or fisheries like this one.  All of these require massive amounts of fossil fuels.  All of these services rely on built up infrastructure from the electrical grid, the roads, bridges, and other aspects of the highway system, the vehicles themselves, and the cheap labor that allow these things to be affordable.  All of these factors in turn require inputs of energy, whether oil, coal, or natural gas for initial construction, maintenance, and use.  Even the means to make renewable energy sources such as windmills, solar panels, and the like, require great inputs of oil and rare earth metals, like neodymium and gold, all of which in turn requires inputs of energy to mine, extract from the rock/silt, and refine.  By their nature, these systems are brittle.  They become more so the more complex they are.

Let’s say, for instance, that gas goes back up to $4 per gallon for the average consumer.  Uber would either get more expensive or fold.  Createspace, Lulu, and Amazon.com, and the other online delivery services make their business with direct delivery.  Gas prices cut directly into the delivery services’ bottom line, requiring a price increase.  If any segment in the supply line fails, whether paper manufacturers continuously failing to meet a quota for Createspace or Lulu, the delivery servicers unable to maintain their fleet as well as they need to meet demand, or the fishery unable to make a profit via online sales, entire industries oriented around the on-demand service will go down.  While it may take a while for the supply chain problems to come home to roost, sooner or later they will, as increasingly larger pieces of the economic pie are devoted to handle the rising costs associated with their business.

Let us go back to the example of cattle-raising. If a rancher relies upon online on-demand meat sales to keep their business going in such a scenario, they will find themselves paying for a hell of a premium with such a drastic rise in gas prices.  This is true not only for the delivery of the meat, but is also felt by little nips and bites from the monthly bills for services, like their electricity and internet, that allow them to make their money in the first place.  They have a choice after a certain point: they can increase costs to their on-demand consumers, and/or try to pivot and seek out a new customer base that is more local, or voluntarily go out of business.  One would hope the rancher would have local reciprocal relationships already active and established.  However, for those who rely on these internet sales to drive their business, convenience bypasses a lot of the resilient methods of developing relationships with customer and the land in favor of upfront profit driven by demand.  When that demand goes down so too does the business.  In the end, convenience for the producer and consumer alike costs a lot more than developing and maintaining a resilient system and reciprocal relationship with the consumer.  It may not produce money as quickly, but it maintains wealth, value and money flow with a great deal more care and certainty.

Coming up is Part 3, which explores why convenience is preferred over resilience, and how it makes systems that rely upon it weak.  It will also explore the avenues I and others are taking in addressing peak oil and climate change where we are.

Part 1 of this series is here.

 

For other explorations of this topic, look here:

The Religious Implications of Peak Oil

Where is the Ground?

A Polytheist Reflection and Response to Convenience, Consumption, and Peak Oil Part 1

“This world rips at you” I have heard it said.  But it is not the world.  It is our American culture.  It is the culture of stuff, of things, of valuing these things over our human experience.  It is the appreciation of the photograph over memory.  It is the rise of things over connection.  It is the map becoming the territory.

Animism and polytheism as I understand and live it as a Northern Tradition Pagan and Heathen, requires us to live engaged lives.  Stuff is not just stuff; it is enlivened.  The computer flows with firevaettir and the earthvaettir that make up its body.  It was built by countless hands and shipped by the death of countless plants and animals.  Whether we’re talking about the human and environmental cost of making the laptop I am typing on, or the infrastructure and energy that keeps the power flowing through it and connects it to the Internet, it required a vast amount of resources just to bring this product into my hands and keep it functioning.  Consumerism and capitalism kills not just the bodies of the countless billions who suffer under its yolk, it kills their connection to the land, to their Ancestors, and the Gods of the places they live.  It kills the culture of those it touches by valuing all at the extent that money can be made off of it.  It kills the soul of the consumer by denying relationship to that which is consumed.  It denies, at its root, a living reciprocal relationship with one’s world, and one’s communities.

Note, that I am not saying that markets, trades, industry, etc. are doing this.  We’ve always, in some way, shape, or form, had these things, whether the flint-knapper trading for skins, or the gatherer trading for meat, the farmer trading for cloth, and the weaver trading for grain.  What we have not had is such a strident divorce between ourselves and the things of daily life, for the things which make our lives possible.  Even my parents grew up farming and gardening.  I am the first generation in my family where my hands were not directly involved for the start of my young life in the production of food, industry, or crafts, and I am poorer for it.  I am having to relearn these skills now, and am seeking to learn more, because of how deep the divide is between my grandfather, my father, and my own generation is.

What bothers me most about this, in looking at all of this in the face of peak oil, climate change, and the rising costs of living, food production, and health care, is the sense of loss of inter-generational knowledge and skills.  While knowing how to treat basic illness with herbs, tinctures and the like may not have been common, it was well-known enough that you could get a few basic remedies from the simple growing of a few herbs.  Knowing how to kill, clean, and prepare one’s meat, how to grow and produce one’s food was not simply a greener practice, it was tied up in how we lived our lives. Knowledge and skill in how to make the things we ate, wore, and used was a daily part of life.  Not everyone did every trade or skill, but there were enough people doing varieties of these things that communities could get by interdependently. There are skills and knowledge that I and future generations will need to relearn, not out of a sense of ‘getting back to the land’ or some other sentimental notion, however well-placed, but because of basic survival needs.

It bothers me, deeply, how utterly dependent I am as a diabetic on the convenient, disposable system of food and healthcare.  I use needles that I use once and throw away.  My insulin is only able to be produced because of massive farming operations and/or labs requiring a hell of a lot of energy and resources.  The pills I take come in plastic bottles that, if I or someone else weren’t reusing them or recycling them, would likely go into a landfill.  The sheer amount of stuff that it takes to keep me alive is egregious.  Not because I am not worthy of life, but because of the mountain of stuff that is required in order to keep me alive, on a baseline.

This really gets to the heart of the challenge of peak oil, though: if so much stuff is required to keep me alive, at what point does it become too expensive for me to live?  Take this to mean me personally, or the capitalist/consumer culture at large, and the question of ‘at what point can we actually maintain this?’ becomes a question that is about life or death.  If the apparatus by which I retain my ability to live starts to dry up, what do I do?  My response to peak oil is not just a sentimental notion, then.  It is about answering this question on a practical basis.  If I can no longer get insulin or metformin, can I live?  Well, in the short term the answer is no.  However, as Archdruid John Michael Greer notes in his interviews on Legalize Freedom, overnight collapse of a civilization happens in Hollywood movies, while it takes 100-300 years for it to fully run its course historically.  I and future generations have time to put things in place so that, while I may not have as long a life as a non-diabetic, the disease doesn’t kill me outright or over time through kidney failure or diabetic ketoacidosis.  I can’t count on the cure for diabetes to be found, affordable, or resilient enough to survive the Long Descent.  So, I won’t.

My response, then, isn’t to expect some cure or treatment to come forward and solve the problem of diabetes.  It also isn’t to expect the consumer culture to change; there is too much money wrapped up in keeping people in perpetual debt and consumerism.  The monetary system itself is sustained by exponential growth, and as we should have learned from the 1970’s oil shocks, the Savings and Loan scandal of the 1980’s, the dotcom bust of the 1990’s, 2008’s housing/financial crisis, there are hard limits to that.  Booms and busts are a feature of our economic landscape, rather than a flaw in it.  The system goes on because it keeps getting inflated.  The exponential ballooning of the cost of living vs. actual earned income of the average American worker should show us that this way of life is unsustainable.  The increasing cost of heating at a time when natural gas in the midst of a glut should show us that.  The consumer culture, and those who profit from it, have no vested interest in doing things another way.  Those who suffer under such a system do.

Part of the response I am engaging in is to go through the hard lessons of relearning a lot of the skills my parents and grandparents took for granted.  It is to learn how to live with the land, how to live with a lot less, and learn how to live a powered-down life as much as I can now, and do more towards this wherever I can.  As JMG says, “Crash now and avoid the rush.”  That is what I am working towards.  I won’t stop taking my diabetes medication , but I will be looking for ways to reduce their use in a healthy way, with the long-term goal to get off of them entirely.

Another part of my response is partnering with folks who will or already live in a way that supports this, whether it is forming communities, alliances, business relationships, or personal relationships, or tapping into ones I have already established.  It is weaving community ties together in a way that supports my family, my community, and myself while encouraging others to do the same. It doesn’t mean a loss of autonomy, either, and it also doesn’t mean a loss of hierarchy.  It just means that, like a lot of things that need to, things get brought back down to a human level.

This is not without its challenges, and for me, the number one challenge right now is patience.  I’ve had my Gods, Ancestors, and a lot of vaettir pushing me hard to get land for several years, and I have been feeling ‘get started already’ quite a bit this year.  Couple this with my own impatience with how long that’s taking, and there are times where it’s hard for me not to get down.  The other challenge alongside this is resources.  Coming together with others, though, is helping for me to work through things.

Coming up is Part 2, which will explore the challenges we face as a country in addressing peak oil and climate change, and why a return to resilience over convenience is the way to address these directly.

For other explorations of this topic, look here:

The Religious Implications of Peak Oil

Where is the Ground?

Redefining Words and Claiming Space

After reading the polytheism section of this post, and more recently here, that John Halstead has written over and over again, I have to throw my hands up. Granted, I disagreed with him vehemently on a great many points before he worked on this post and wrote an addendum to it, but I still deeply disagree with him over what I view as one of the most egregious forms of twisting words.

When someone speaks up and misuses words they need to be checked. It is wrong to take words out of their historic, and current context, and to twist them so that the words mean what you believe. Polytheism does not equate or equal panentheism or pantheism, which is more or less what I see John Halstead trying to say with his supposed paradox that “The Gods are many…but one.”

Nowhere in his first piece does he quote polytheists, now living or dead. He notes in his addendum there are folks in the polytheist, reconstructionist, and other camps that directly disagree with him on this point, communities that use this word, and yet goes ahead and writes what he wishes as polytheism is supposed to relate to his Neo-Paganism. I absolutely do not recognize what he quotes as polytheism as such; I do not ‘use’ my Gods, nor are They psychological constructs.

Mr. Halstead quotes from Waldron in The Sign of the Witch “From a neo-Pagan perspective polytheism is not the belief in a world of separate and distinct Gods but is rather an acceptance of the principle that reality and the divine is multiple, fragmented and diverse.” Okay, this may be a neo-Pagan perspective, but I do not find it polytheist at all. So far as I have seen, read, and understood to be true, polytheists treat and believe our Gods as complete in and of Themselves; They are not a fragment of some whole. Nor are They facets of a jewel. To use the metaphor, each God and Goddess is a jewel unto Themselves, and a great many facets or a single facet of Them may be seen, known, and worshiped by a person.

The question of “What the hell is Mr. Halstead getting at? What does John Halstead understand about Neo-Paganism, let alone anything regarding Paganism?” are some questions that have come to mind a few times as I have read his works, but never so much as here. How in the Nine Worlds is his idea of polytheism supposed to actually square with anything resembling polytheism such as it is lived by its adherents? How is it supposed to square with historical polytheism? All I see in his examples are panentheism, and monism. These are not polytheist. The quotes he has given are not polytheist. “The radical plurality of the self”? I have no idea what his point is here. Polytheist religion recognizes a plural Self, i.e. the Soul Matrix of the Northern Tradition. Polytheism has plurality built into it.

If Mr. Halstead’s point is solely psychological, i.e. ‘psychological polytheism’ then I believe has has missed his mark by not being more clear about what he is trying to define, and using improper words to try to define it. Religion helps shape a person and society’s psychology, its understanding of states of good or ill health, in the mental, physical, and spiritual realms. However, religion is not psychology itself. Nor should psychology, in my view, seek or be sought to supplant religion. If I have misunderstood his intent, I apologize. If I have misunderstood or misconstrued his meaning, I hope to have better definitions and descriptions written by him in the future without twisting words which I use as primary personal descriptors, such as polytheism. Were Mr. Halstead writing solely from his own view with at least something recognizable behind the words he wishes to redefine, and not using a word that people already use as a primary identifier, myself included, perhaps I would have less of an issue.

“According to the theologian, William Hamilton, the gods of Neo-Pagan polytheism are not to be believed in, but are “to be used to give shape to an increasingly complex and variegated experience of life.” (quoted by Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon). “

So his idea of polytheism is that They are to be used, to be a tool to help us shape, and therefore also understand the world around us. Yet we are not to believe in Them, even as They are supposed to be used to shape and understand the experiences of life? When I make a woodcarving I do not stop believing in the tools nor their effect on the wood any more than I stop believing or believe that the wood came to me as-is or was grown in the shape I bought it in. That wood had a life before it was cut and shaped. That wood was part of a tree, and that tree had roots in the ground, and that ground had an existence of its own well before I ever set foot upon the ground or happened upon that cut of wood from that tree. So too the tools and their components, which came from other places, and had to be fashioned into the shape they are now.

The Gods, then, are cast only into the form of the tool, rather than the ground. In the form of the woodcarving rather than the tree from which the wood came. I fully believe the Gods can be the ground, the tree, the tool, the toolmaker, the carver, the carved, and so on. In other words the Gods can be in and/or be each part of the process (the process itself may have God(s) and Goddesses over and/or involved in this, too), to say They are merely to be used as a tool denies Their actual involvement and reduces Them to an object to be manipulated. It takes away what is essential to a polytheist perspective of the Gods: personhood. Not that They are human or human-like, necessarily, but it denies Their Being and Self, as independent of us. It denies one of the basic understandings that polytheism, in any form I have practiced or been exposed to, teaches: the Gods are Beings Unto Themselves.

I do not use my Gods; I use a computer. I may ask a God or Goddess to lend Their power to a spell, or to intercede on my or someone else’s behalf, but intercessory prayer does not equal use. I do not use my Gods in ritual; rather, I pray to Them and ask for Their Presence. This point is perhaps the largest point of contention I have when anyone uses the word ‘use’ in regards to the Gods, or to Ancestors or spirits.

If I say “I use Bob on First Street when I have car trouble”, it does not diminish Bob’s personhood nor does it treat him as an end. I acknowledge his role in my life and that he is a person I trust. Saying “I use Brighid when I need healing” does not acknowledge the personhood of the Gods and instead makes the God’s identity and relationship one has with Them about their use.

It matters little if it is a Wiccan talking about ‘using’ Gods in ritual, or an atheist Pagan about ‘using’ Gods to understand the world, or themselves. If one is using this language, then they are talking about ‘using’ Beings, which I believe have agency, self-awareness, understanding, and sentience. They are talking about Beings I consider to be worthy of worship. They are talking about ‘using’ Beings from traditions which I believe to be holy and good. When the language of ‘use’ (as in using tools like an athame or wand, screwdriver or saw) is used in regards to the Gods it is disrespecting both the Gods and the traditions that hold Them as dear, holy, and worthy of worship.

One cannot utterly separate the Gods from the traditions or cultures which give/gave worship to Them. Understanding and knowledge of the Gods are informed by the traditions, cultures. The Gods inform the religions, cultures, and traditions in turn whether by mystic experience and/or simply by being the basis of the religion. This does not mean that you need to be a member of my particular Northern Tradition religion to worship the Norse/Germanic Gods, or to do it right. What it does mean is that one must acknowledge that to worship the Norse/Germanic Gods one needs to understand the culture and traditions out of which the Gods of this/these traditions come. It means that one must come to the religion with its background culture(s), tradition(s), etc. rather than trying to make it, and an understanding of and relationship with the Gods, come to you.

Taking the Gods out of these contexts renders the understanding of Them incomplete. When Ms. Krasskova or I, or another author say ‘take on an indigenous mindset’ part of this means is that one must meet the Gods on Their own terms rather than our preconceived notions, ideas, and beliefs of how our relationship should be. “Odin is the God of Wisdom” is an easy phrase to make, and while it may be true, is not the whole of all He is, and may or may not reflect my relationship with Him at all. I and other polytheists who worship Odin can come to independent understandings and relationships and so on with Him while believing Him as a God independent of our existence, and agree on basic clear concepts, on to deep details of theology. This does not necessarily make established tradition(s), culture(s), and so on, the do-all end-all of any relationship with a God, Goddess, Ancestor, spirit, etc. (although it may) but it will inform, shape, define, and further develop one’s understanding of these Beings, and the ways in which one relates to, worships, etc. Them. The traditions are the bones on which the meat of the relationship are built.

“It is the reality experienced by men and women when Truth with a capital ‘T’ cannot be articulated according to a single grammar, a single logic or a single symbol system.” (David Miller, The New Polytheism).

If you cannot articulate truth, or even try to articulate Truth, then your logic and symbol system have failed. We can debate the nature of reality according to different belief systems, and the extent that different polytheist traditions agree or disagree with one another on these things. Yet, without a single grammar, logic, or symbol system, our understanding of the Gods falls apart. Without coming to understand our Gods on Their terms, as best as we can, we are leaving our understanding of Them woefully inadequate.

Without a single grammar, logic, and symbol system, understanding the Northern Tradition, and most polytheism, falls apart. You cannot understand the Northern Tradition through the Kemetic, nor Roman polytheism. To say otherwise is saying that one can understand and speak German fluently after having done so with Greek. Are there some universal truths? If there are, (and to avoid speaking for all polytheists I will say if), they are broad, such as: the Gods are Beings Unto Themselves; respect is given for the Gods, Ancestors, and/or spirits; hospitality to people, Gods, Ancestors, and spirits; offerings are given in respect to the wishes, traditions, customs, etc. to the Gods, Ancestors, and spirits. The appearance of respect, for instance, will differ between traditions, customs of certain groups within a given tradition, the Gods worshiped by a group, the relationship between the people and their Gods, Ancestors and spirits as a whole and individually, and many, many other factors I could not hope to account for. Yet, on a baseline, there are similar beliefs, even if the shape and effects of those beliefs differ tradition to tradition, group to group, and person to person.

Polytheism is not just a term or a description; it is an identifier that an entire religious community uses to understand itself. It is an identifier people use as means to express who and what they are to others. It has an accepted meaning, Trying to dilute the meaning of this word is an attempt to dilute the meaning and understanding with which this word is used as an identifier. To try to redefine polytheism as something it is not is an insult at the least, and if enough people start using it in the way Mr. Halstead would care to, actively will produce problems in communication.

In the second post linked above, Mr. Halstead seeks to “’re-god’ the archetypes”. I take great pains to say that this is not polytheism. It is fine that he seeks to do it, but it is not polytheism. I believe that he, seeking to put the numinous back into archetypes, rather than Gods into archetypes, is a fine goal for him to do. However, it is not polytheism as I understand it, practice it, believe in, or acknowledge. It is perfectly fine that he believes, understands, practices, acknowledges, etc. in a religious context different than I. What is not fine, and what I will not stand for, is his appropriation of the word polytheism, polytheist, etc. to suit his own ends. What he describes and espouses is nothing I recognize as such.

He rightly points out that his beliefs are a choice. So too, is identifying as a polytheist, and embracing the beliefs therein. As he points out in the post, these are his beliefs. I am not attacking his beliefs, or him, please let me make that perfectly clear.

The spectrum of religious belief does exist on a spectrum, but rather than a singular spectrum, I believe it extends from many, of which extreme psychologism to extreme transcendentalism is just one. Religious beliefs are also a series of continuum on which belief and disbelief are polar opposites. These are tools which can help us understand where we lie in relating to the Gods, Ancestors, spirits, ourselves, the world around us, etc. You can be a polytheist that disbelieves their own experiences in the extreme just as you can be a be an atheist Pagan and fully believe that your experiences of the Gods, such as They are, are real. The scale is only as useful as how accurate and accepted it is.
Mr. Halstead writes “The spectrum of belief regarding the nature of divinity ranges from extreme psychologism to extreme transcendentalism. I fall more toward one end of the spectrum. Others fall more toward the other end. But we are on the same spectrum. For example, whatever they believe about the ultimate nature of divinity, I would wager most people can acknowledge that the experience of divinity is to a certain extent paradoxical, in that divinity can at least seem to be both “in” us and “outside” of us, both a part of us and also other than us. ”

Well, yes, when we are placed on that spectrum of course polytheists are in a very different spectrum from him. In a great many places our various religious positions do not line up. We may be able to agree that ‘the experience of divinity is to a certain extent paradoxical’. In my case, the idea that the Gods can be cosmically as well as personally present is one place where I could say the experience of a God, such as Odin, is powerful and mind-boggling.

Recognizing that I may have attributes within me, or parts of me that resonate with Odin does not mean that Odin is in me. It means that these parts, attributes, etc. resonate with Him. Odin is Odin, Odin is within Himself. When He gave breath to Ask and Embla it was a gift, one which did not cease to be His breath or a gift, but much like my parents’ DNA, that gift of life and existence is part of me. I am, in the end, external to Him. For me, this in particular is not a paradox. It makes sense, since He is not I, and I am not Him. My parents gave me life, and their DNA is bound up in me, but I am not them, nor they I, and while there are parts of me that resonate with them and parts of my persona that match up very well with them, I am not them, and vice versa. Finding the nature of the Gods in ourselves is not a paradox. I can look to a great many things, fictional and non-fictional, in a variety of media, and ‘find myself’ or aspects of myself, things that resonate with me. So too may I see the Gods in the world around me even while recognizing that my personal experience of ‘if I see three pairs of crows it may mean Odin is present’ may either be inaccurate (i.e. it is just 3 pairs of crows, congrats) or simply a personal experience for/with me alone.

Devotional polytheists have contributions to the larger Pagan communities that we may make. Whether we can make these contributions depends largely on whether or not we are given space to speak in it from our own beliefs, experiences, and traditions. Our contributions will depend on whether or not our words and identifiers are respected. I do own the word polytheist the same way that I own the words cis-gender male. The same way that I own the word pansexual. These are identifiers. I do not make these on my own, since meaning is not made in a bubble. These words are accepted by the communities that employ them, and in larger society as meaning certain things. They are, in general, respected for what they are, even if not fully agreed upon. If Neo-Pagans like Mr. Halstead are going to try to include us, respect for us starts with respect for our identifying words, our beliefs, traditions, and experiences. We do not have to agree, that is not at issue here. At issue is basic respect.

Mr. Halstead says that using the words ‘polytheist’ and ‘polytheism’ in psychologized and naturalized senses has precedent. Yet, even he admits there is better precedent for how I use it: “there’s better precedent for using the word to mean a belief in gods as literal, independent, sentient beings”. So while he writes that he sympathizes, he will continue to misuse one of the primary words by which I identify myself. There are two definitions for sympathy, and I am not sure which one rankles me more in this context: “feelings of pity for someone else’s misfortune”, or “understanding between people; common feeling” (OED). What this tells me is that either he is unmotivated by his sympathy to change his behavior, or in the face of it, he is ignoring something that wrongs others so he can use words as he sees fit.

If someone is misusing a label or term, they are misusing a label or term. His belief that “that saying Margot Adler — or Doreen Valiente — is not a polytheist is a little like saying Paul was not a Christian.” No, actually, it is stating a truth. From what writings I have seen, and with my experience of having been on a small panel with Ms. Adler, neither one of these women are polytheists such as I use, understand, or acknowledge the term. The quotes given are monist, panentheistic and/or pantheistic. None of the quotes acknowledge the Gods as Beings Unto Themselves, nor even that They are differentiated from one another. Beliefs like “all the Gods are one God” and the like are not polytheist. There is no belief in many Gods to be had here. It is not polytheist. It does not make any of the contributions these women have made to Paganism and Neo-Paganism less, it simply means they are not polytheist. These women are Pagan (or Neo-Pagan if you will) but they are not polytheist. So no, this is nothing like saying Paul was not a Christian. It is saying Paul was not a Lutheran.

Whether or not trying to erase or silence polytheist voices was Mr. Halstead’s intent, it is no longer an issue for me; it is what he and like-minded people are actively engaged in doing that concerns me. If you wish to identify as a Neo-Pagan and the larger Pagan communities accepts this I will not stand against them; that is their decision. If the larger Pagan and Neo-Pagan communities accept atheist and humanist Pagans as Pagans and/or Neo-Pagans, that is their business and their right.  ‘Polytheist’ and ‘polytheism’ are not just ‘something I found’ or just words that ‘capture’ what I believe. ‘Polytheism’ and ‘polytheist’ are words that identify who and what I am. It is an identifier of the communities and people I find common cause with. It is a religious identification. These words should be used with respect to and for the people, communities, and religions they represent.

In sharing his beliefs Mr. Halstead does not silence my beliefs or erase my community. His attempted co-opting of my words, most especially my primary identifiers, does. His insistence in using these identifiers as he has done and continues to, does attempt erasure and silence. Setting up his standards as norms for my community are further attempts at erasure and silence. His use of the words we primarily identify ourselves with in the larger Pagan community on an inter and intrafaith website decreases our ability to effectively define ourselves. Twisting the words ‘polytheism’ and ‘polytheist’ to mean something they do not dilutes their usefulness as words, silences our effective use of those words, and erases our identity along with it.

Update: My thanks to James Stovall for being a sounding board, and for the example with Bob in the middle of this piece. He helped me think on the term ‘use’, and how it can be used in a sentence without the loss of personhood, and with respect to the person.