I'm pleased to see how many people have signed up for this list.
Pleased, but a little confused. This is the homelist of a proposed
Chicago area group, and yet most of you don't even seem to be
located on the North American continent! Yes, I know, it's on the
uk server. I have no idea of how that happened, having never even
been a visitor to the British isles, much less a resident.

So, where stands the krewe? I put this project off to one side
for a few years, not coming back to it until recently. I wasn't
sure of the direction to take it in, but with the (short lived)
resurrection of "Skyclad in Chicago", I had an opportunity to
test the waters a little. I have to admit, they were a little
choppy. The very question "how do we help create a more comfortable
environment for would-be female participants", pitched to a Pagan
crowd, produced responses that varied between paranoid hysteria
(somebody though that the discussion was a veiled personal attack
on him) and a stoner's brain-dead self-satisfaction (complete
with comments about how people were "living too much in their
heads" when the discussion turned too rational for his tastes).
Very clearly it became clear that any attempt to run this as a
strictly Pagan event was doomed to disaster. The childishness and
self-absorption are just too common and well-entrenched for an
adult event there to be a good idea.

How does one handle this? Part of the answer, I would suggest,
is to recognize that while a festival, for some of us, may carry
religious significance, the actions taken during them aren't
intrinsically religious. We can go out, we can party and talk
about the history and culture a little bit along the way -
and leave it at that, keeping the event outwardly secular,
keeping the spiritual experience a personal one, shared only
with a few who come by and ask, shared by those who are open to
doing so - BUT WITH NO ATTEMPT TO MAKE THIS A COLLECTIVE
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. I think that's important - important
enough to underline or put in caps in lieu of a way of
underlining the text. In some sense, by trying to make the
spirituality collective, we hand the outright nutcases a
podium they can try to seize hold of, and an excuse to say that
normal societal expectations should be set aside. By saying
that that which is collective shall stay secular, we take that
excuse away. And we open the door to participation by our
Catholic and Eastern Orthodox friends who might have some very
serious qualms about taking part in anything Pagan.

What is common is what we do, not what we believe, and if
you wish to think of a statue as representing an angel or
relevant patron saint or even just an allegorical figure and
the values embodied by it, go right ahead - a ceremony
in honor of that which you would wish to honor is what you'll
be part of, and why not? Take a good look at the myth of
Romulus and Remus. The Roman gods make few appearances in it.
The symbolism, if representing remarkable events, is nevertheless
secular - one could just as easily have God looking over the
infants and inclining the wolf to be gentle. Thus, we lose
nothing and gain much by making this a multifaith group, and
as Classical Traditionalists some of us do our part to help to
return to Pagandom, something that it has been losing - its
sense of humor. The ability to not take itself so (bleeping!)
seriously. As for the Christians, they get a good party.

Win-win, eh?

One very basic understanding for those who would come, though -
we talk ABOUT religion from time to time, but we don't talk
OF religion - we approach it on an academic or cultural level.
What did people do in the past, what did they believe, what
are the implications of those beliefs - but we don't talk about
what our beliefs are. Some who are present are Catholic, some
are Pagan, and odds are you won't know who's who if you're
there - and you shouldn't ask. It's a private matter that, as
we've seen will not (and should not) have any bearing on what
we are doing. On another day, perhaps we might discuss this,
but here that mystery is left as yet another of the masks we wear.

More later.


Antistoicus
Owner, Lupercalia Gathering