Just to give you an idea of what I mean when I say spiritual inspiration can come from anywhere, here are some examples from my own practice.
1. I use prayer beads, which of course are common to many cultures; I designed my own system, however, so it’s not a mala or a rosary.
2. I light a flaming chalice on my altar to honor my UUism, which was one of the first ways I altered my way of doing things when I joined the church. The chalice is a traditional Pagan symbol, but to me the church’s flaming chalice is the light of reason in the embrace of spirit–a flame in a chalice. That’s just how I view it, though, everyone thinks of it a little differently as a symbol.
3. I smoke cleanse my space, but usually with stick incense for practical reasons. I have been known to use white sage but I’m not buying any more now that I understand how threatened the plant is becoming. I’d rather the tribes who use it in their own traditions have it. There are a couple of Native-made stick incenses that I’m willing to buy but no more bundles for this Witch.
4. The goddess that I interact with looks almost exactly like a celebrity (Sara Bareilles, please don’t tell her, lol). I have no idea why! I am a fan of her music but if we were going on fandom levels alone she’d be Taylor Swift. That would be truly weird.
5. When I envison magical energy I use a modified version of a concept I found in a fantasy novel (Gael Baudino’s Strands of Starlight, which calls it the Dance; I just call it the Web of Life). When “hooking up” to the Web (you can’t be disconnected from it but your awareness can be) I experience and imagine how, in the movie Pacific Rim, the Jager operators snap into their robots and enter the Drift (see gif below).
6. Not long ago I was doing a meditative journey and found myself in the Forest of Spirits, which is where I sometimes meet with Persephone, but instead someone else showed up, and we’ve met a few times since. I don’t think he’s a god, just a teacher-type entity–and at least in these meditations, he’s Dream of the Endless from The Sandman TV series on Netflix. We talk about working magic through the visualization of the Web of Life, and I’ve learned quite a bit about, as he calls it, dreamweaving.
Full disclosure, this may just be because I want to bang Morpheus like a Tibetan temple gong, but even so, the imagery works surprisingly well for me.
7. Over the years I’ve used imagery from witchy and ritual moments of Supernatural, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Vampire Diaries, The Secret Circle, The Craft, Practical Magic, and Frozen 2 when casting circle or doing energy work. When I see something neat that looks like what I’m planning to do, I try it! If it moves me, I keep doing it. If not, I go back to my usual methods.
8. The images of Deity on my altar include a Funko Pop! of Te’Fiti from Moana.
Okay, so I couldn’t find the Pacific Rim gif I was looking for but I think you’ll agree this one is way better than anything I could have shown you related to the post.
Here’s a thought that immediately gets sneered at by a great many people in a surprising number of religions: You are under no obligation to devote yourself to “ancient” gods or archetypes. You are free to take inspiration from your own world, here and now, and your spiritual practices can come from new sources and even…*gasp* pop culture.
The fact is a lot of “old” deities can come with a lot of baggage and not really make sense in today’s world. As with many things it’s a matter of perspective.
Let’s say you’re drawn to the Greek goddess Hera. Hera comes from a patriarchal culture that frequently portrays her as a bitter, vengeful, and jealous wife, the embodiment of a dozen icky stereotypes about married (and all) women. But when you meditate on her, or contact her in some other way, you feel her strength and power, her refusal to let her husband’s flagrant infidelity and general rapey-ness go unchallenged. You find in her a modern feminist goddess, not a shrieking shrew.
So which Hera is “right?” If you find something in a deity or archetype that was not part of their ancient cultural makeup, are you still revering that same deity, or something new you’ve made up?
Many, many women perceive Persephone as a Queen and a woman who undergoes the descent into Hades willingly, not a kidnapped little girl being traded between male gods. Many argue that the myth existed in a more powerful form before the Greeks took it and turned her into a passive victim, but at what point does a deity stop being Greek and start being modern? At what point are we projecting our modern values onto something born from a completely different time? Is a sovereign Persephone valid?
If you are not a mythological purist or a historian my answer for you is, “Sure, why not?”
It is my opinion and experience that sometimes Deity comes to you in an inconvenient or weird form. In a lot of ways you can’t control it. If the Goddess is reaching out to you and looks suspiciously like Scarlet Witch from the MCU, and you vibe with that, well, why not work with her in that guise? If the way you envision magical energy is as the Force, why deny it? If the warrior traditions and mythos of the DS-9 Klingons gets your bat’leth buzzing, who am I to say you’re just “making stuff up?”
Psst…we’re all making stuff up to one degree or another. That’s beside the point. The point is that the sacred will come to you in ways that make sense to both of you – even if it takes you a while to figure out why exactly, or what that particular vision means to you. It may be meant to combat a stereotype or help a particular part of yourself evolve.
Not every deity or teacher is going to stay with you for life. Some come to us to show us something particular, to help us through trauma or processing an event, and then fade out so Someone Else can come in. We’re not all dedicated to a single face of Deity or even to a single pantheon. You may end up with a Goddess for every day of the week, or you may adore one your whole religious career.
That said, if you find yourself drawn to the spirits or deities of an existing culture (especially a historically oppressed culture, like most Indigenous tribes the world over), PLEASE do your homework, and consider very strongly whether “borrowing” one of those concepts or beings is okay for you. If you are a white person and you decide you just can’t bond with any deity except White Buffalo Woman you need to be prepared for the fact that you will be challenged on it – and rightly so.
There are thousands of faces of divinity and rituals to celebrate that divinity. There is no need to take from oppressed and closed cultures. Even those that aren’t necessarily closed, like Hinduism, should require you to respect that culture, the history of the deity, and the way They are revered by actual living people. There is a difference between appreciation and appropriation, but that difference relies on respect and education, which is YOUR responsibility. Other cultures don’t owe you a pass because you “have a Native friend.”
The cool thing is we don’t have to do any of that! Really consider what it is you’re trying to accomplish and how you could get that same result using tools that aren’t the spiritual property of people who have been victims of genocide, those very traditions ground beneath a colonizer’s boot. I bet you can find a way. It doesn’t have to have come from another existing tradition to work. It doesn’t have to be ancient to be valid.
The benefit of our form of cheerful syncretism is that we have an opportunity to create all new practices, traditions, and even gods rather than clinging to the old. But even if you are working with ancient deities from well-documented cultures like Greece, research and study are still paramount.
You may have gotten the idea that I believe gods are just archetypes, but that’s definitely not true. They are archetypes to a degree, but archetypes with centuries of history, myth, worship, and power behind them. After all, you were inspired to connect with that deity – that inspiration came from somewhere, right?
My experience has been that Deity is reaching back to us through those archetypes, and in that sense they are very real and often behave differently than they would if we just made them up out of nothing. We’re tapping into something very old and often very opinionated. Even when working with adaptations of modern and popular culture keep in mind that there is energy behind them, and often they hook into ancient archetypes and energies because that’s what humans are spiritually drawn to.
The gods are not just faces and names and a list of correspondences. Deity as a universal force is alive; it changes and dances like any other living thing.
So when you reach out to the universe and she reaches back, whatever she looks or sounds like, take some time and find out everything you can about that aspect of Deity, then proceed with both mirth and reverence. And be sure and ask her name; it’s only polite.
Most forms of Neopaganism use ritual tools to one extent or another, and a great many are similar across traditions. The nice thing about that is once you are familiar with the standard tool set and the general outline of Pagan rituals you can attend a Circle with just about any group and at least have a pretty good idea what’s going on.
Like most baby Witches I used to be really into the tools of the Craft (Except wands. I always felt silly using a wand.). Altar-building was and still is one of my favorite forms of sacred art. Taking down, cleaning, and rebuilding my altar is a very important ritual in my personal tradition (I even managed to make a video about it once!)…but now, in my 30th year as a Witchy type (holy smokes!), there are only a handful of tools I use, and most of them are only glancingly similar to the traditional Wiccan toolkit.
Most particularly I have left off the use the ritual blade common to most Neopagan trads, most often referred to as an athame. I have one that I have loved for decades, with a black blade and an ebony handle, but I just don’t use it anymore, mostly because I don’t do a lot of full-out ritual. I work in my bedroom, in a corner where my altar is a folding desk (in deference to my bad back and knees); I don’t usually cast a Circle any bigger than where I’m sitting. I can do that just fine without waving a knife around.
To me an athame is a fantastic tool for groups – it helps them focus energy, visualize the Circle, and be aware of the dual nature of power and responsibility. But as I practice 99% solitary my old pointy friend is currently wrapped up in my box full of old ritual cords, pendants, and other objects I’ve gathered on my spiritual travels.
I only have a few tools that I really use. What I do have a lot of are pretties – Goddess statues, including my collection of small figures that I call my Wee-ities; natural objects; altar cloths I change out seasonally (or whenever I feel like it), symbols of my particular brand of divinity; divinatory toys and accoutrements; and a framed image of Kore/Persephone by Anette Pirso that I turn depending on the season.
My Current Tool Lineup
Prayer Beads – I have two sets that I use, one for the darker half of the year and one for the lighter, although sometimes I just grab the strand that calls to me at the time. I made one and purchased the other online. They’re a powerful meditative tool for me and I have a number of prayer cycles, gathas, and mantra-type recitations that I use. I loosely based the original design of my handmade set on the Catholic Rosary – it has different sized/styled beads and several divisions to make counting easier rather than being a strand of all the same size like many malas. They’re also not loops – I don’t wear them or anything like that – just a straight line.
Chalice – but not one for drinking out of. It has a candle in it which I light every time I sit down at my altar (and sometimes just for comfort). The flaming chalice is the primary symbol of Unitarian Universalism. It has different meanings to different people; I think of it as the light of justice and knowledge held in the palm of the Goddess (since the chalice usually is treated as a feminine tool in the Craft), and looped in by diversity. (The two circles represented the Unitarians merging with the Universalists.)
I have two on my altar right now: One that my church gave me when I became a member, and a vintage one I bought that is the centerpiece of the altar. I do sometimes drink things in ritual but I’ll bring in a different vessel for that.
Pentacle – Mine is a flat wooden disk with the symbol painted on along with representations of the Elements and the Triple Moon. I made it myself from a plain wood piece. I use it primarily as a focus during spellwork; I place whatever I’m charging onto it and channel energy into the object through the pentacle. I also consider it the anchor point of my Circle, like its center of gravity.
Incense Burner – I am not a fan of charcoal tablet incense; it’s very evocative but it’s also high maintenance. I prefer sticks most of the time and have a small plant pot full of sand into which I stick a whole mess of sticks in different scents that I can just spark up whenever I want just to make the room smell and feel good. I also have a variety of purpose-made sticks for magical work.
Divinatory Tool – Most often I keep my Light Seer’s Tarot near to hand but sometimes I switch it out for the Shadowscapes deck.
Candles – There is a novena candle on either side of my altar that’s really just there for light. Those along with the light in the chalice are usually plenty to see by.
Dragon – The unsung hero of Pagan life: The long-necked lighter. I have one that hangs on the wall next to my altar at all times.
Bell – A dear friend gave me a gorgeous metal bell many years ago that has the loveliest tone; whenever I’m doing something a bit more formal or am cleansing my altar I hold the bell over the surface and ring it once. That baby vibrates energy like nobody’s business!
And that’s pretty much it aside from whatever magical or seasonal accoutrements I have around the altar. The decorative items are very important in their own right; I can change the whole mood of my room and myself just by shifting the colors or seasonal objects. I’m always fiddling about with what’s there.
I suppose I should include my chair as a vital ritual tool since it holds the most important part of all: My big ol’ Witchy booty. After all, tools are only as good as the person using them. A stick is just a stick until you choose to dedicate it as a wand.
And here’s the video I made a couple of years ago showing all my altar stuff. It looks a bit different now but the layout is still the same.
Strap in, this is gonna get a little wordy. I’m not going to cut too much though because this is important.
I used to be your bog-standard Wiccan duotheist – God and Goddess, Moon and Sun, all that stuff. Before that, I spent time as what we used to call Dianic (I have no idea if that’s still the term) meaning I only revered the Goddess. I was influenced by a series of novels that still affect my spirituality today (The Strands of Starlight series by Gael Baudino).
By the time I was working in a coven I’d returned to duotheism, and for a long time had a relationship with a particular face of the God, whom I called Jeff (just for expediency among humans since He didn’t really have a name). I also had a yearlong experience with a dark face of the Goddess that started out amazing but ended very badly.
When I wrote The Circle Within I espoused a form of panentheism, although I didn’t know the word yet (people were very happy to tell me after the book was published, lol). I described it as the belief that Deity is within the universe as well as outside it – that everything is Deity, that nothing can be disconnected from Them because we They are us and everything beyond us.
In the years leading up to my return to Paganism and my adoption of Unitarian Universalism, I went through all the usual questions and doubts one does when one is a thoughtful believer in a dark decade of the soul. Is God good? How do you account for suffering? Do we really have free will? And so on. I wasn’t satisfied with any of the answers, let alone how they would apply to duotheist Paganism (which was quickly distilling back down into something more like monotheism).
Then, quite unexpectedly, thanks to my UU minister, I ran headfirst into Process Theology, and realized that, holy shit, it has a name!
I won’t go too deeply into the subject as it would become very dry very quickly, but I have come up with my own take on it that adds in more personal stuff I’ve experienced. I’m still exploring the entirety of process theology, but the basic concepts have helped me to crystallize a lot of what I already felt about how the sacred works.
The essence is this: Deity is a verb more than they’re a noun. Revelation and creation are continuous, and that Web I mentioned in the post about “what is magic” – the Web that is all possibilities and probabilities – is the Goddess’s being (Or God, or Goddess/God, whatever lights your candle). Since She is that Web, and the Web is in constant flux, that means deity also evolves. It does so through us and through creation. In a universe like this we are subject to a lot of circumstances based on our lives intersecting with others, but all beings have some creative freedom or free will. We simply don’t act in a vacuum where free will is so cut-and-dried.
Deity in my way of thinking has a different character from the mainstream – She is by nature benevolent, but not omnipotent or perfect. Omnipresent, and omniscient more or less, yes, but as Her creation is a process that never ends, that means She is subject to the Web as much as we are. This helps me settle the question of whether or not God is good – to me, I’ve always sensed Her as loving, even if it’s not always pretty, but with the evil in the world I couldn’t reconcile Her nature with reality. Looking at it from this angle I can.
She knows everything that is happening in the Web at every moment, including the millions of possible outcomes for our choices, but because we have freedom, She can’t know which of those possibilities we will choose until we choose them.
She may not be omnipotent, but she’s still pretty damn potent – Deity works primarily through influence, showing us beauty and joy and love and the value of compassion to encourage us to choose those paths, rather than thundering down domination or intimidation. She doesn’t force us to do anything. Therefore the answer to “God, why do you allow suffering to exist?” is, “Well…why do you?” Humanity didn’t wake up one day and decide the world should be like this. Millions of choices got us here. That same divine creative freedom is the only thing that can save us.
There is an element of randomness at work in things as well; in most cases you can trace how something happened back through the choices of the people connected to it, but sometimes rocks fall and everyone dies. The chain of events that led those rocks to fall is far too long or distant for us to see, but She sees. There is causality for everything, but not necessarily inherent meaning. Humans are the meaning-makers, so it’s our job to take what happens in our lives and make it mean something to us.
All of this is very brain-intensive, and that may lead you to think my relationship with the Eternal Unfolding is something purely intellectual, but you’d be mistaken. She speaks and moves through everything that exists and through all our potential and creativity. We can work together to shift the waking world in ways that are positive and benefit myself and others.
Deity itself is formless, genderless, faceless; but They are more than happy to enter into symbols and images humans have created so that we can relate to it. To my view that means your god could be YWVH or Thor or Quan Yin or David Bowie or Dream of the Endless or all of those at once; they all stand for the same force, and act kind of like an icon in that the picture you click on connects you to something a lot bigger.
Relationship is key in process philosophy and theology. We exist in a web, remember, not each dangling at the end of a single string. In this sense God is also in how we treat each other, how we interact, and how we codepend. All beings live in relationship; that includes humans and nonhumans. Everyone contributes to the Web and makes small changes with their lives that can ripple into big changes. Everyone is inherently worthy and of value.
I’m sure there are plenty of nice theological arguments against the way I see things, but honestly? I don’t give a damn. I’m learning as I go, experimenting and experiencing. This way of looking at Deity and the universe makes sense to me and to my spirit. I feel like if it’s a positive influence on my life and helps me to grow, who the hell cares if God is one or two or the Seven Dwarfs? In the end, someone’s belief about God is less important to the larger world as someone’s behavior based on what their God persuades them to do.
She wants to see you be brave.
As for my Goddess? She is essentially dual – one dark half, one light, each governing different times of year. The two facets bleed into each other quite a bit. There’s not a hard division. I separate the two just to give me a more useful seasonal calendar. Most of the time we meet in a forest during either a Full or New Moon, and in that place the sky swirls around like the Aurora Borealis combined with Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. What does She look like? Honestly? Kind of like Sara Bareilles.
If this sounds a lot like the Persephone in the Shadow World series, well…it should. The books and my life draw from each other. The Web, the Forest of Spirits…yeah, that’s all “real.” Did I make it up? Hell yeah I did. But as I was getting into the symbolism in the novels, those images began to bleed over into my practice, and finally I realized that She had been there all along, waiting for me to put it all together. The “real” one isn’t a vampire goddess, of course, but hey, Nobody’s perfect.
Now let’s explore how the 7 Principles of Unitarian Universalism interact with Pagan beliefs and ethics. You don’t have to dive too deeply to see how compatible the two are.
1st Principle: The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
2nd Principle: Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
3rd Principle: Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
4th Principle: A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
5th Principle: The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
6th Principle: The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
7th Principle: Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
There is also an 8th Principle in the process of becoming an official thing: Journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural Beloved Community by our actions that accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.
As a progressive, a feminist, and a proponent of process theology, the 1st and 2nd Principles are kind of a given. Even a terrible person is a person with the same right to exist with dignity as I have, and they became what they are both by their own choices/mistakes and by the systems and institutions that helped them become that way. That’s just reality, not an excuse; but knowing how a toddler got a gun doesn’t stop you from taking the gun away, does it?
We all have some measure of creative freedom in our lives. Principle #2 points out that our lives exist in relationship with others (meaning everything and everyone we interact with, human or otherwise), and (in my set of values) the only way to live within the Divine Web is to make sure our relationships involve justice, equity, and compassion.
The 3rd Principle is one of the things that drew me to UU in the first place: As I said before, you can believe in whatever suits you as a UU, or nothing at all, as long as you share our values and are willing to work together with your fellow travelers to keep nudging that long arc toward justice. With that plurality of belief comes the importance of Principle 4: A free and responsible search for truth and meaning. To me this means learning all you can about the varied ways humans interact with the Divine Web (free), but also respecting the practices of other faiths and cultures (responsible). Cultural appropriation has historically been an issue in UU congregations as much as it has in Wicca and other NeoPagan traditions but both are working to address it.
If you’re an anarchist at heart the 5th Principle may rankle, but then again, you’d be less likely to consider joining a church in the first place, right? UUs believe in the democratic process, though we acknowledge its flaws and how, in practice, it has become so corrupt in America in particular. But it still seems like one of the best systems going, so as long as the system can be changed for the better, we’re all up in it.
When it comes to Principle 6 I don’t know of any NeoPagan tradition that believes in racism, misogyny, environmental degredation, and homophobia. But although I’ve never encountered an entire trad that held these beliefs but I have seen individuals and groups within the trad that did. I usually refuse to call any path “wrong,” but if your religion does promote any of these things, it is WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG. It needs to go sit in its little circle of wrongness and be WRONG and stay away from me and mine.
When we bring in the 8th Principle – in a word, antiracism – we really dig into our philosophies on justice and liberty. Just as a lot of people don’t think legislation protecting women’s rights is necessary because the Constitution “already covers everyone,” there are people who think the 8th Principle is redundant based on the other already-existing principles. But in truth, racism is so endemic to our society that you can’t just *say* everyone is equal and have it come true. In our culture we have to actively work to create systems that are antiracist. If deep down you believe in the American promise of equality and freedom, then looking around you must see we have neither, and it is our responsibility (everyone’s!) to change this.
Ask the average (hahaha) Pagan UU which Principle they like best and many will probably say the Seventh, Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. The contributions of Earth-based religions weren’t part of the earliest versions of Unitarian Universalism, but unlike a number of other faiths UUs are quite pleased to evolve with the times, so Pagan ideas about nature became one of the primary sources for UU wisdom. The more intensely climate change ravages the planet the more important the 7th Principle becomes. #7 also fits in nicely with my own concept of Deity and the universe – at the moment I call it the Divine Web – which governs every form of connection I have with, well, everything. I’ll get more into the Web in a later post since it’s the fundamental metaphor of my personal tradition, but suffice it to say, I would have to name #7 as a favorite too.
When I tell people I’ve joined a church, they tend to stare at me like I’ve sprouted a second head. After I clarify “It’s a Unitarian Universalist church,” I get one of two responses most often: 1) Relief that they didn’t miss the part where I converted to Christianity (then worry that this has indeed happened out of the clear blue nowhere) or 2) “So are you still a Pagan? What does that make you now?” If they really want to know, I tell them what I’m telling you:
I consider myself a Pagan Unitarian Universalist Witch.
The order of the words there is important to me. “Pagan” represents the inner circle of my spiritual identity, my actual beliefs about Deity and religion. The outer circle is UU, how I come together in community with people whose beliefs lead them to the same conclusions about right, wrong, equality, and justice that mine do. Everyone in that community has their own inner circle but we all connect through the outer.
I like the feel of landing on the word “Witch” last, as the art and craft of causing change at an energetic level, using symbology and the power of imagination, is a way that I bring both the inner and outer circles into manifest reality.
The thing is, I’m not a protester. I’m never going to march in the streets or risk being tasered or make phone calls. I have social anxiety around all those things that I find insurmountable – and for a long time it made me feel inadequate as a “social justice warrior” (an epithet I accept with pride), but I finally realized something important:
The world needs all the help it can get, in as many forms as it can come. It needs letter writers and sign carriers and megaphone shouters and barricade breakers and advocates of all stripes. It needs writers and artists. It needs introverts and extroverts. Administrators, organizers, workers within and outside systems. It needs bake sales and pamphlets and prayer and divine light and sweat and all-night planning sessions.
And it needs Witches. I view magic as a sacred tool that doesn’t take the place of other forms of action but augments it and can often tip the scales in subtle (and not so subtle) ways. I can do magic to help draw attention to a cause and attract the right people to help. I can push for greater kindness and compassion as well as nourish them in myself using magic and prayer. And by joining a UU church, I can find new ways to use my other talents and aptitudes.
As a UU I come into contact with all sorts of people that I wouldn’t have just practicing on my own, and that means I learn from them how to be a more effective change-bringer, and they learn from me as well. Community is kind of a nice thing to have, even when you’re largely a loner like myself. I love the opportunity to choose to enter into relationships with some of the coolest people I can imagine knowing.
Pagans are often very inwardly focused – most modern spirituality movements are, especially the nuttier the rest of the world becomes. In the face of so much we can’t control, practices like Witchcraft give us some sense of captaining our own fates. We focus on becoming happier and better people, which is a wonderful goal to have; but I think many of us forget to extend those vibes beyond our own Circles, or don’t realize that they can help other people besides ourselves.
The inner work is very important to me – coming into an authentic expression of life and manifesting change in myself and my own little world means I have more to offer “out there.” But adding my own skills to a congregation of people who may not have the same beliefs or traditions but have many of the same goals for social change makes my efforts ten times more effective.
I often feel overwhelmed by the enormity of wrong that my beliefs compel me to make right; but being able to work with others reminds me it’s not all my responsibility. In fact, community is going to be what saves us if anything does – the ability to come together and find solutions. It’s way easier to topple an ivory tower when you’ve got 100 others pushing with you.
In this way those three segments of my identity come together to work as a whole. There is of course one more very important aspect to my me-ness – veganism – but it’s not a separate aspect. It informs all of them. I’ll go into this more in future posts, but I consider my vegan practice deeply entwined with my spirituality, which then ripples out through both my relationships with others and the way I manifest change. I feel like all of these things make sense, and work together as a living system, my own particular corner of the Divine Web of all existence.
This year I want to explore life as a Pagan Unitarian Universalist more thoroughly – it’s easy enough to say you’re one, and pretty easy to join a UU congregation without going too deeply into what that means as long as you’re enthusiastic about progressive religion and social action, but when you get down to it, how do the self identifiers “Pagan” and “UU” connect? Obviously the two are compatible since there are quite a few of us, but I want to consider what it means for my own personal spiritual tradition to be made up of these two things.
I consider Paganism the internal workings of my spiritual life, and UU more as outward workings. Generally “religion” is what you do with other people; and “spirituality” is what you do on your own with your gods (or whatever). UU is pretty outward-focused and makes the perfectly reasonable assumption that promoting social justice and positive change in the world benefits all of society, which of course includes you as an individual.
If you’re not terribly familiar with Unitarian Universalism, the gist is that a UU congregation is not formed based on shared belief, but on shared behavior. A UU church comes together and agrees on how to treat each other in what’s known as a Covenant. Every UU church will have one, and sub-groups within that church will usually each have their own. Again, it’s not an agreement about God or faith or any metaphysical concept – it’s a formal way of everyone agreeing not to be assholes to each other.
I also have a personal covenant just between me and my gods, which was the first UU thing that I decided to adapt to my own practice. It’s about relationship as well – mine and Theirs, and mine with myself. If you ever hear me say that I’m “out of Covenant” with myself I probably did something regrettable.
Unitarian Universalists follow what we call the Seven Principles, and draw spiritual inspiration from the Six Sources. I plan to say a lot more about both but first I just wanted to share what they are so that in my next post I can burrow in.
The Seven Principles of Unitarian Universalism
The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
The 6 UU Sources
Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life.
Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love.
Wisdom from the world’s religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life.
Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God’s love by loving our neighbors as ourselves.
Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit
Spiritual teachings of Earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.
