Just keeping collecting kindling.

When I first began to feel drawn toward pagan practice, I was searching for an outlet and a vessel. A place – a way – to pour all those moments I encountered in contexts that seemed unsuited for them. Hearing a song during a party that transported me to a more somber, serious place; wanting to dash out of the coffee shop at the season’s first sign of rain to welcome it; attempting to convey to skeptical Skeptics the overwhelming feeling of ecstatic experience that made the term “spiritual” unavoidable for me. 

 

Such moments had been with me as long as consciousness, but as I grew into my young adulthood they increasingly made for an awkward fit into the rest of my life. In college I discovered how much I loved to think – critically and purposefully – and that moreover, I was pretty good at it. After graduating I went straight into a PhD program for history, and as my intellectual confidence grew (an unusual dynamic in grad school but, I was lucky in many ways in this regard) my perspectives and politics evolved rapidly. By the end of year one I was an atheist, by the end of year two a liberal, and by the end of year four a leftist. Deliberate and analytical thinking had brought me a sense of self, and a sense of purpose. 

 

But this was never exclusive; there were many other aspects of myself I loved and embraced as a part of who I was. Yet those aspects lacked either an intellectual, social, or emotional framework to situate them – I was an atheist leftist who also passionately loved dogs, punk music, and the occasional ecstatic experience at a dance party. These were asterisks or, qualities tacked on to a more well-defined “core” of who I was as a radical and an intellectual. In some very real sense, I didn’t always know what to do with these parts of myself. 

 

So when I started unwrapping paganism as a way of interacting with these elements of my experience, I was excited but also very nervous. How do I do this right? What kind of rituals should I design? Carrying them out for the first time was nothing short of awkward; I felt shy and silly, even in front of myself. Coming on the heels of this sense of uncertainty was a concern over details – I tried to do things in a certain sequence, with a precise amount of coordination and a rigidly enforced lack of distractions. Although I wasn’t embarking on a literal belief in magic, I approached ritual like it was a delicate spell that could easily be derailed. 

 

Part of this also had to do with my sense of aesthetics, which doesn’t seem to tolerate too much postmodern mixings of design. I’m picky about how I decorate a room or what I wear according not to just superficial criteria of what “goes together” – like whether or not two different colors clash or compliment – but whether or not things “match” on a thematic level or invoke the same imaginative world. So I figured if I wanted to tap into a pagan-based spirituality, anything that didn’t fit into what I imagined the sights and sounds of that world were like would throw me off – or more precisely, throw the magic off. 

 

Well as you’ve likely guessed, it didn’t quite work out this way. Referential consistency might be appropriate when picking out an outfit, but spirituality, for me at least, is both too unpredictable and expansive for that. On the one hand, trying to conduct every aspect of the orchestra resulted in as much frustration as elation, leaving me feeling depressed in the middle of rituals that weren’t producing the “music” I was hoping for. On the other hand, as I continued learning and thinking about the roots of my spirituality, I found myself stumbling into the emotional spaces I imagined finding mostly in ritual at unexpected moments: digging a hole in the garden, writing down a poem in a coffee shop that suddenly came to mind, reading a book on pagan history in the middle of the night. It didn’t take me too long to find out that I couldn’t force the moments I craved; I had to let them come to me whenever they wanted to, because in a fundamental sense, it was out of my hands. As I penned during Yule in 2020, in the process of accepting this:

 

Patience.

I cannot demand the gods speak to me at my will. 

They will light their fires inside my mind when they will – 

I can only collect the kindling. 

 

And that kindling, I came to learn, comes as much through everyday practice as it does through the major holidays in the wheel of the year. I perhaps feel no more connected to my paganism than when I walk out my back door every morning to say hello to my plants and flowers – especially as I don’t do this because I chose it as part of a deliberate plan, but because I simply cannot help myself. It’s always the first thing I want to do in the day, and it never fails to make me feel that weird and wondrous combo of elated and grounded at the same time. 

 

Perhaps the most surprising and delightful consequence of this learning process is how I’ve learned to accept what I’m experiencing or encountering in all sorts of situations without feeling as though those moments are either embarrassingly inappropriate to the context or too fragile to survive it. Why can’t I embrace an encounter with the gods as I know them even if I’m in the middle of a coffee shop, for example? Why not listen to pop music during a ritual, if that music is working the conjuring I’m looking for? And so the fuck what if I often feel most connected to my distant ancestors when I’m watching the most quintessentially modern of art forms, television and film? After all, as one reviewer of a Wardruna album put it so well, I know I can’t recreate the past: but I can remember it with respect and in the process craft something new – something that continues the chain, which always, always involves change. 

Planting the seed can be as powerful as watching it bloom. 

Moreover, letting go of expecting so much out of my major rituals has allowed me to actually enjoy them much more. First, they are just simply a lot less work when I’m not trying to coordinate a million details and dragging every pagan-esque object I own out to my fire pit and back again. But second, they’ve turned into an important opportunity for me to practice acceptance. I’ll never stop hoping for a decidedly delirious encounter with the gods every time an equinox and solstice rolls around, but that’s ok; I can sit with that desire, as well, and sit with feeling it unfulfilled or sit with an openness that it might be fulfilled in ways I cannot predict or expect. And is this not life? 

Finally, I would encourage anyone starting out in atheopagan practice to be aware that the benefits of practicing accumulate and reinforce themselves over time. Human beings love celebrations like Christmas or Easter not only because of the virtues of the ceremonies themselves, but because we have accumulated so many memories and references in relation to them. Likewise I find that, although many (most?) of my rituals have not turned out the way I might ideally imagine them to go, I keep looking forward to them nonetheless and, as I return and refine what works for me, I feel more and more at home; no longer embarrassed in front of myself, but rather returning to a space where I’ve found confidence, wisdom, and awareness. The gods are always with me: but sometimes, they will prefer to whisper.