11:11pm. I just got out of the bathtub. SJ’s album Tangles is playing. I’m warm, and still slightly damp. The cat is purring in my lap. The moon is nearly full. I’m restless. The room is lit well by candles and the moonlight through the window. I’m having a little trouble getting comfortable with the laptop in the bed. I can smell the sandalwood incense from across the room. I’ve got voices in my head tonight. lots of things going on, lots of movement in the nonphysical realms.

I don’t know how other people fill at times like these. I don’t even know that other people go through times like these.

I feel hyper-sensitive, but there is so much perception that I can’t really grab a hold of it and focus. I feel a little inadequate, as though I must be a very poor vessel for the Art if I can not even still myself and my space enough to hear the voices of the other world.

I’ve turned off the music, hoping for some deeper stillness, some more potent quite. I can hear the hum of the laptop. Outside the window a large car has driven down Howard, West to East. In the distance there are a couple airplanes, and the intermittent traffic on Western Ave. A car is coming down one of the alleys now, it’s a larger one, a truck or an SUV. A motorcycle revs it’s engine, and a second, third, and fourth answer it. Sounds like they’re headed south on Western. There is a slow drip in the bathtub, I can hear it, and the cat now playing with it, getting her paws wet as she tries to hit it before it hits the bottom of the tub.

My hearing is probably my sharpest sense, even though I depend plenty on my eyes. Sometimes I think having such sharp hearing is much more of a curse than a boon. Sure, if I focus really hard I can hear phones rining downstairs or next door, and I can hear that whiny-tv-noise from several rooms away. But loud noises hurt quite a bit, and if there is a lot of ambient noise, or too many similar noises going on at the same time in close proximity and volume I have a lot of trouble distinguishing between them.

Herbis Orbis just interrupted my train of thought. Which is a rather good thing. I’ve been feeling a bit disconnected the last few days, and tonight especially. Hearing from her was a good pick-me-up, and helped move my thoughts in a different direction.

As I said earlier, the moon is almost full. I breathe her in. White/silver light that fills my body. More potent than sunlight, or rather more accessible. I’ve been thinking a lot about the Sun and the Moon lately. As ideas. As thoughts.

I don’t have a cohesive discussion to go into here, but I do feel a ramble coming on. I’ll try to keep it somewhat brief.

Cartweel (The Great Tininess) has been working on a paper lately that examines the mythological structure that Neo-Pagan men have created to understand their place and role in Neo-Paganism, many traditions of which are heavily dominated or led by women. I don’t agree with some of his thoughts, or conclusions, but I don’t disagree with all of them either. This is important, because it’s got me thinking about the concept of Divinity in a NeoPagan context.

Many NeoPagan traditions honor or worship a masculine deity and a femenine deity. The idea is that they are equal, a polarity of energies from which the force of life, the universe, and 42 have sprung. Whether the perception is valid or not, there is a strong perceived tendency in the NeoPagan community to exalt the femenine above the masculine. One might assume that this is due to the fact that there are far more NeoPagan women then there are men (or at least this is the perception), but I’ve been thinking along another set of lines.

People generally are drawn to NeoPaganism for one of two reasons. The first is because they feel a calling to be a practitioner of magic in some way shape or form. Either because they have a talent and need a context in which to understand and control it, or because they have a need to exert some level of control over the circumstances of their lives and believe magic is the path that will help them get there. Many NeoPagans are like many Christians, and are not truly religious or spiritual people. They adhere to, or work within, the general tenets of their faith simply because it is what they’re supposed to do. Many of the NeoPagans who come to NeoPaganism looking for magic, are practitioners of magic first, and religious NeoPagans second, if at all.

Let me be clear that there is nothing inherently wrong with this. My language probably expresses some distaste here, and personally I tend to get annoyed by practitioners who call themselves NeoPagan, but don’t view their ‘religion’ as anything more than the magic they practice. Yet, seeing as I came to paganism to develop my magical and psychic talents, I can’t truly feel that their path is wrong. I personally believe that people are happier and more fulfilled by their faith when it is part of their lifestyle, not just a tool they use to achieve their ends. So while I am frustrated by this tendency, I am also sad for people who don’t see a deeper aspect of their professed religion.

Anyway, the other reason people come to NeoPaganism, is because they feel they need a more personal connection with Divinity than their previous faith offered them, or they were called to NeoPaganism by a growing relationship with a spirit or Divinity. And it is here that I’m interested in at the moment.

One thing that I have noticed about NeoPagans, particularly newer NeoPagans, is that they immediately strive to change their vocabulary and insert the word “Goddess” wherever they would normally have said “God.” I don’t think this is an indicator that the Goddess concept is more important than the God, but very simply that they don’t want people to think they’re Chrisitan, and saying Goddess draws a clear distinction.

That said, this tiny change impacts the language of NeoPaganism and probably adds a great deal to the perception of femenine superiority or female-led NeoPaganism.

More interesting to me though, is that people tend to talk to the Goddess in ways they don’t talk to the God. I’m not sure if it’s just an outgrowth of the above practice, or if it’s something more, but I don’t often here NeoPagans praying or talking to God. But they often pray or talk to Goddess. (Also note that the definite article is almost always used before Goddess, and almost never before God. Linguistically this places Goddess (the Goddess) as a weak Proper Noun, and God as a strong Proper Noun, which is just an interesting aside.)

Anyway, what I was really trying to work towards, and where I’m obviously not gettingnar concepts lately. Goddess energy is very often associated with either the Earth or the Moon. It seems that NeoPagans tend to go in for the Earth Mother piece of it when working FOR Goddess, and the Moon Goddess piece of it when asking for something FROM Goddess. I suspect this has something to do with proximity. We can work to help the earth, and earth based spirituality does emphasize environmentalism. But it’s unnatural for our psyche to look to something so close to us for answers or aid, whereas the moon, being distant and mysterious fits our psychological need for an external Divinity which observes and aids us.

Anyway, the point is, that Goddess as moon seems more accessible to us as NeoPagans than God as sun. To get into an energetic aspect now, the light of the moon is the reflected light of the sun. Qaballistically we’re talking about reflection from Tiphareth, the power of the balanced Son/sun of God/Father, being reflected by Goddess/Daughter to the Kingdom. It is interesting to note that the Foundation, Yesod, the Moon, is in many ways simply a mirror which reflects the light of the Sun, Tiphareth.

This plays strongly in my worldview. You see, I believe that all our perceptions are merely a reflection of reality. We can not truly know the noumenal world, because all of our experiences are filtered through the veil of sense, of perception. Every perception we have is subject to the interpretation of our physical senses (or metaphysical senses), and is therefore subjective. And this is why the Goddess, being closer to us, and closer to our experience of the world, is more accessible and easier to commune with than the God.

If you followed that I’m proud. If not, puzzle it out. It’s nearly midnight and I’m sleepy now.

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