The Rowan Tree

EURYBIA was the goddess of the mastery of the seas. She seems to have presided over the external forces which influenced the main, including the rise of the constellations and seasonal weather, and the power of the winds. Her husband was the Titan Krios, who may have been associated with the constellation Aries, marker of the Greek new year. Her grandchildren all had power over the sea. They included the Anemoi (Winds), the Astra (Stars), Hekate (Witchraft), Selene (the Moon), Nike (Victory), Bia (Force), Kratos (Power), Zelos (Rivalry). Some of these represent human command of the seas : the winds for sailing, stars for navigation, and force, power and victory representing naval supremacy.

According to Hesiod's Theogony, Εὐρυβία had a heart of flint within her. She was the daughter of PONTOS (the Sea) & GAIA (the Earth). So if the sea makes love to the Earth, it erodes the rock, deposits it somewhere else, and makes chalk - which has a heart of flint. So I wonder if Eurybia was also a goddess of chalk? As someone who was born on the chalk, I find it very magical. Also Εὐρυβία is the grandmother of Hekate, goddess of witchcraft. I read somewhere recently that Doreen Valiente found chalk landscapes very conducive to magic.

As goddess of the sea and the winds, Eurybia is very closely allied to witchcraft, because witchcraft was often about the control of the winds; witches used to tie knots to bind or release the wind. And of course, the sea symbolises either the subconscious or the collective unconscious, the supernal mother.

I am the soundless, boundless bitter sea
Out of whose depths life wells eternally
ASTARTE, APHRODITE, ASHTORETH
Giver of life and bringer-in of death;
HERA of heaven, on earth, PERSEPHONE;
LEVANAH of the tides and HECATE
All these am I, and they are seen in me
I am the soundless, boundless, bitter sea
All tides are mine, and answer unto me.

~ Dion Fortune

I have always been suspicious of the "need" for leaders (I'm an anarchist at heart) and tend not to join groups which have individual leaders. Obedience is not a virtue.

If you have an organisation, it needs organising, but I think that should be done collectively and democratically if possible (which it is in most cases).

As soon as you have individual leaders, you get too much power vested in one person; you get issues of succession when the previous leader dies, falls ill, or loses interest; you get arbitrary decisions; and you get power struggles.

I am glad that Wicca does not have an unelected leader (it has people who are widely respected but they do not wield power, and there is no overall leader; most covens have leaders, but people can always leave if they are too autocratic), and nor does Unitarianism (which has a committee and an elected president; but congregations are mostly autonomous; the central body is enabling rather than prohibitive). If you must have a leader, at least put in place the means for getting rid of them fairly and transparently; thanking them for their service to the community and enabling them to move on.

The best way to ensure the fair governance of a group is to have rules (not rules imposed by one person, but agreed collectively by the group, reviewed periodically, and emergent from the group circumstances); otherwise the ego of the strongest personality will dominate the group, and you get de facto leaders, which is probably worse.

I can't believe I am actually writing a post about this. But I'm going to anyway. Even though all previous attempts at defining Paganism have failed; even though I've spent hours on forums discussing this.

Camille Paglia apparently offers a definition of paganism, which is, in my opinion, both too broad (embracing the whole of western culture) and too narrow ("pictorialism plus the will-to-power").

I have tried previously to define Paganism:

The key pointers which identify someone as Pagan are belief in deity which includes goddesses as well as gods (though beliefs range from monotheism to monism to polytheism, as in Hinduism); usually some kind of connection with or veneration of nature; that existence on earth is to be celebrated and enjoyed; that love and sexuality (in all its forms) is sacred; they generally also have a positive attitude to magic and ritual, and do not believe in sin or similar concepts. They acknowledge the existence of virtue and vice (indeed much of Pagan ethics is based on Virtue Ethics) but do not necessarily believe that this results in a fundamental separation from the divine.

Of course, you can always find someone who identifies as Pagan but disagrees with one or more of the above; and you might find non-Pagan traditions which agreed with some of them.  So it's really difficult to define what Paganism is.  I have also tried to describe Paganism as a set of values and attitudes rather than a set of beliefs (an idea I borrowed from the Unitarians & UUs). 

I do think that Paganism could be described as Loyalty to the Real - that is, living beings in the physical world are more important than hypothetical ones in other realms.  But many Pagans are moving away from this position and embracing devotion to deities instead of environmentalism.  Maybe we need a new word (Graham Harvey's version of animism, perhaps, or Eco-Paganism) to describe this loyalty to the real.  Note: Some spiritual practitioners refer to the ultimate divine source as the Real and regard this world as illusory; but when I say real, I mean real as in physical.  Of course most Pagans regard their deities as being immanent in the world, but they seem to care more about deities, mythical beasts and the ancient dead than they do about the decline of the Dartford Warbler.

My deity is the Universe.  I did not choose Her, She did not choose me.  I fell in love with Her.

Whatever the definition of Paganism ends up being, I hope it is as broad and inclusive as possible, and that Paganism doesn't turn into a creedal religion.

Kittredge Cherry (a Christian blogger and author who is Pagan-friendly) asks, "Gay spirituality vs. everybody spirituality: A new closet?".

A few Pagans (such as Riverwolf and myself) have already commented. What do you think?

I think there is a distinct queer spirituality, not necessarily for any essentialist reasons, but because the queer spirituality that I have observed transcends more boundaries, includes more imagery that others can't handle, and GLBTQ people have carved out a niche for ourselves in traditions that sought to exclude us or ignore us. Also, it's not yet safe or appropriate to merge it all in with other forms of spirituality, because queer people are still excluded in many traditions, either by outright homophobia (as in many forms of Christianity) or by unthinking heterocentrism and gender essentialism (as is sometimes the case in Pagan circles).

Interesting discussion over at nonfluffypagans:

I had an interesting questions asked of me today, namely why pagan message boards flare up into monumental name calling, bitch slapping, flame wars?

so why do you think message boards, online communities and email lists of the pagan variety sometimes devolve into flame war? (especially considering paganism in general prides itself on tolerance.)

My theory is that on forums and mailing lists, people don't have a sense of who the other posters are (on some level they're not seeing them as real people with feelings to be hurt) and so they lash out. If you read someone's blog or LJ on a regular basis, you get a sense of who they are, and when you post a comment, you're doing it on their territory, so there's slightly more of a feeling that you should be polite. A forum being a public space (where a lot of people are disguised as someone else) means you can get away with flaming.

The cause of the arguments is frequently over what Paganism is, but there's something about the social meaning of forums and mailing lists that aggravates the whole thing into a flame war much more quickly. Mailing lists are even worse than forums because at least on a forum there's an avatar which your brain stores as the person's face (and which probably says something about who they are), whereas on mailing lists you just have an alias.

In actual fact, sociologists and the like have done a lot of research on how to make online discussion feel safe, inclusive and not descend into flame wars, and they came to much the same conclusions as me.