Happy Ostara!

March 19, 2020

It is a rainy, dreary day and the whole family is stuck at home due to the coronavirus pandemic. The kids’ schools are closed for a month, and I’ll be teaching my courses online once we “return” from an extended spring break at the end of the month. And into this bleakness comes Ostara, the Vernal Equinox.

After going over my house with both Lysol and palo santo smoke, things are settling into a new normal. But this pandemic has made abundantly clear that in the end, we are not in control. After an extended period of feeling, at least for people who grew up the way I did and in the United States, like we have significant control over our own lives, our own health, we are getting just a taste of how our ancestors felt. Watching the seasons change, birth and death, abundance and famine, and trying to make sense of it. Trying to create a sense that they had some influence on the chaos through rituals and rites.

So I have gathered some crocuses and snowdrops from my lawn and am reading about Ostara, Eostre, and new beginnings. I’ll be baking some bread this afternoon to share with my family. And I will try to be hopeful.

Psychology and Paganism (part 3): Tarot reading

February 23, 2020

I was 16-years-old in a Waldenbooks when I bought my first Tarot deck. It was a Rider-Waite deck and came with a tiny little instruction book with card meanings and the how to do the classic Celtic cross spread. I tried my best to do readings for myself and some friends, and it eventually was packed away. I don’t remember throwing it out, but it’s since been lost to the ether.

So when I started on this new journey, I needed a new deck and picked up this deck and book combo by Josephine Ellershaw. I can only say I was drawn to the beautiful illustrations and the fact that it said “easy” and my time is divided between many things. I needed easy. I have to say, the book is straightforward and I’ve been really happy with it, and the deck looks gorgeous and feels right.

I have been following her suggestion to practice on myself while keeping a Tarot diary. I still refer back to the descriptions in the book, and have only done two spreads (beyond the occasional 3-card, and a daily 1-card). I keep the deck wrapped in a cloth along with a smoky quartz.

I have to admit that after so many years devoted to science, this is one activity that definitely activates cognitive dissonance. What known physical property could possibly influence what card will end up where in a shuffled deck? How could events yet to come impact what card I draw and in what order? How can a piece of laminated cardboard with a beautiful picture be anything more than just that? (A post on Carl Jung, archetypes, and Tarot is forthcoming!)

So what have I found doing my daily one card draws? Each morning when I got to my office on campus, I shuffled and cut the deck, and drew one card to place in my tarot card holder. I kept a record for 10 days, and started to see patterns emerging.

Day 1: Queen of cups

Day 2: King of cups

Day 3: Three of cups

Day 4: Eight of cups

(I started to get worried. Why so many cups?! And yes, I had shuffled my deck multiple times before beginning this process)

Day 5: King of pentacles

Day 6: Seven of pentacles

(Uh oh. Are we going to do this again?)

Day 7: The Empress

Day 8: The Hanging Man

Day 9: Wheel of Fortune

Day 10: King of Swords

Taking a look back, using both the book referenced above and https://www.biddytarot.com so I could see at least one other description, I realized that yes, I started this process during a time when I was feeling overwhelmed, with a lot of negative emotion. The beginning of every semester brings with it feelings of inadequacy (imposter syndrome runs rampant in academia) and I was allowing myself to wallow in it a bit. Around the time the pentacles appeared, a new opportunity arose, a project that I may not be approved for but one that gave me new hope that I can do what I need to do to prove myself (a constant struggle for tenure-track professors). A rough couple of days followed, with me once again questioning myself and where my life is going, and then finally, a day of confidence that I am in the right place for me at the right time, as long as I stay focused, do the work, and believe in my intellectual abilities.

So, was the tarot showing me this, a physical representation of the energy that was going on in and around me? Or, was I instead influenced by the cards a la Barnum effect? Or did I see a card indicating an emotional day and then subconsciously made that happen, vs. a card indicating that I have the ability to manifest what I want in life and therefore went into my day with increased confidence?

To be completely honest, it is easier for me to believe it is the third possibility. I know from the research, and life experience, how powerful our subconscious mind can be, influencing our emotions, our decisions, or opinions, in ways we don’t realize, with inputs we aren’t aware are affecting us. Advertising is built on this very concept.

But I am going to keep going. I will continue to explore tarot, add to my altar, explore crystals, herbs, and oils, while simultaneously taking a deep dive into the available empirical psychological research. And I will continue to share here what I find as I travel both paths.

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Happy Imbolc!

February 1, 2020

First Sabbat ritual of this project/journey, and it makes sense that it is one representing beginnings. A google search turns up way too many variations on solitary Imbolc rituals, so I put together this very basic one involving creating a paper Brigid’s cross and a simple candle lighting.

Did anyone else feel awkward the first few times? And as an introvert, I find myself unable to speak my intentions out loud, instead saying them in my head. I’m going to have to unpack these feelings and find out more about why instructions (even candle color!) vary so greatly. Also, continue to explore the differences between Pagan, Wiccan, and Magick and the degree to which one can borrow from/move between them. But I’m sick (my usual beginning of semester cold!), so that has to wait for another day and another post.

Oh, and I noticed my cat just standing guard the whole time in my doorway…

Happy Imbolc!

Psychology and Paganism (part 2): Smudging

January 15, 2020

Smudging

Palo Santo

In my preparations for this exploration of Paganism (I am still trying to figure out if this is the best term to use when referring to multiple Nature-, Goddess-, or Magick-associated traditions), I found that many shops that sell crystals, candles, and incense also sell these things called “smudge sticks”. Curious, I picked up a small kit that had both a sage and a Palo Santo smudge stick, and an abalone shell that was suggested to me by a local shop owner.

Going online to learn more, the first thing I noticed was that a very wide variety of sites and online magazines were talking about smudging. Vogue and the spruce introduced it as a way to remove negative energy from the home. Healthline added a medical twist. Many blogs and smaller sites dedicated to both Western and Eastern spiritual practices had helpful guides and How-tos. And there was no shortage of sites advertising smudge sticks for sale, mostly white sage. (I will be posting soon about the psychological studies on the effects of burning herbs, incense, and using essential oils). So this was obviously a more widespread practice, across spiritual traditions, across the world, across many types of people, than I had realized.

Then I looked into the origin of smudging, and realized that although many cultural and spiritual traditions include burning herbs and other plants for reasons from healing, to cleansing, to sending intentions up to the gods, “smudging” in particular, with sage and certain other plants, is specific to the Native or Indigenous peoples of the Americas. The Canadian Encyclopedia has a particularly informative entry about smudging that has been performed by Indigenous people in Canada. This article also brought up the question of whether smudging might be considered cultural appropriation. An article on Bustle also addresses this question, and notes that the increase in smudging or “sage-ing” seen in recent years has put stress on the white sage industry, with some producers inappropriately and unsustainably harvesting, and a concern about the potential for over-harvesting the wood Palo Santo that is also used for smudging.

I still wanted to try it, however, and rationalized that I had already purchased the smudge sticks, they were constructed by small sellers in small quantities, and that I could approach the ritual both as something important to the original peoples of the Americans and try to be respectful of their heritage, and as a practice extremely similar to what so many cultures over the millennia, including the Northern Europeans from which I descend, with the use of smoke being a unifying activity.

So I opened some windows, lit the Palo Santo stick pictured above (I read that the scent is lighter than sage and that it is good for both getting rid of negative energy and helping with physical healing), and stated my intention that the smoke might clear away the negative energy and tension that had been building in my house. I started at my altar and then walked around the house in a clockwise fashion, room by room, wafting the smoke toward corners and into closets. I had to relight it a few times. Not sure if that is my inexperience or a characteristic of Palo Santo.

As I walked around my house, watching the smoke rise from the smoldering smudge stick, I did imagine my ancestors, in my mind’s eye they were women, similarly preparing a space, gathering their materials, making a flame, stating an intention, and using the smoke to have an effect on their surroundings, to have a physical manifestation of their desire to cleanse their minds and their homes, to use the things provided by the earth around them.

Of course, as I passed through the living room, my son asked me why I was making the house smell like a fire. “I’m cleaning,” I replied.

 

 

New Project! Psychology and Modern Paganism (Part 1)

January 12, 2020

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Photo by Dan Farrell on Unsplash

I was 16 years old, wearing a broomstick skirt, a peasant blouse, and a clear quartz crystal, a paperback on Celtic myth and magick open in front of me. I had gathered what materials I could from around the house and tried to summon Cerridwen (I know — the youthful audacity!). I don’t think I actually conjured anything that year beyond strange looks from my peers. My time as a Wiccan was short-lived and I eventually went on to take comparative religion courses alongside my psychology and pre-med education, and eventually declare myself either agnostic or atheist.

Fast-forward 20+ years, and I am a psychology professor sitting in my living room as my 15-year-old daughter and her friends read their birth charts and talk about tarot. I’d lost my Rider-Waite Tarot deck long ago, but there was something comforting and familiar as one of the young women read my birth chart (I’m a proud Sagittarius but apparently something in one of my houses caused her to exclaim “oh, poor baby”). Not long after, I found myself exploring a local crystal, jewelry, and incense store in our tiny downtown, picking up a Lapis Lazuli tower and a blue chalcedony necklace.

In the ebb and flow of spiritual practice, what is making this another time of increased interest in supernatural and spiritual things? In particular, why are many people turning to old, nature-centered practices and Pagan rituals from around the world and to ideas rooted in the New Age movement of the last century? Am I right to believe there is an increase, as I notice teens turning to tarot and astrology, moms selling essential oils, crystals being sold everywhere from small shops to etsy to Target? I believe that many of us are feeling a sense of powerlessness and concern about the future and our world, and I know others are out there writing about this, in both popular media and scientific journals. I decided to take a deep dive into exploring these questions.

But I have decided to take a slightly different approach than some. No surveys and questionnaires. I look forward to reading what other scholars have found in their survey data analyses. Not from the position of someone who is already a believer and practitioner of some form of Paganism and is in a better position to teach it to the world. Instead, I am going to explore it from two directions simultaneously: from outside, through reading everything I can about the psychological aspects of Modern Paganism, and from the inside, learning and practicing some elements myself and recording my own feeling, thoughts, and insights.

I will be sharing pieces of this journey here, such as an article that I find particularly informative or a reaction to trying out a practice or ritual. Eventually, I hope to put the whole process and what I learn from it together into one work, although where that will be shared remains to be seen.