The atomic division of people into consumers and influencers, voters, employees, “alphas,” “betas” and on and on is a great distraction from the beautiful truth of our constant, gorgeous, often scary, impossible-to-untangle togetherness. Our pagan ancestors lived in a time when we still knew that we rely on one another for survival. This is as true as ever, but with enough distraction and division we can temporarily become convinced otherwise.

Paganism is what we were all doing before Empire convinced us we needed to follow its laws to connect with the source of life and goodness. We don’t.

To really oversimplify it, but helpfully, I hope: paganism is simply the practice of connection. It’s the actions you take that nourish kinship between you and other beings, be they human or other-than-human. When you look at what pagans were doing, and what indigenous peoples worldwide do and always have done, it’s making offerings. And why make offerings? To foster resilient and healthy relationships, that’s why.

We humans have always done this. Organized religion didn’t stop us, but it did confuse matters, especially when those organized religions have been closely aligned with consolidating power, which they very often have been. Consolidating power over people and beings, rather than between them, (an extractive, faithless gesture) relies on division, relies on a weaponization of the forces of fear and death, both powerful catalysts for connection or disconnection, depending on the intention behind their use.

I believe it’s always worth engaging in curiosity about what’s happening, especially when you don’t like it. Misery is part of being human, yes, AND there are many meaningful ways to actively engage with it. Please listen for a moment while I tell you I believe that your misery isn’t actually even a bad thing. I wish it weren’t so abundant, of course, but in terms of the primary experience, I believe it is really good information. Your body is intelligent, your feelings are intelligent, and sometimes you have even actually chosen temporary discomfort in favour of long-term benefit, you just might have forgotten for the moment. Maybe this is is even the logic behind our experience of being human. Deciding to become and remain alive with all the attendant risks and losses (or are they offerings?) is brave as fuck. We don’t need a distraction from our misery, and we certainly don’t need it appropriated by desperate, disenchanted cynicism bent on creating more of the same.

Don’t get me wrong, I love buying beautiful clothing and soy milk cappuccinos and watching fun TV series while eating popcorn covered in nutritional yeast from the bougie shop on the corner. My friend Rachel once called this “bingeing the future” in reference to the fact that her ancestors wouldn’t begrudge her experiencing the many abundances of modern life that they no doubt once dreamed she might have. But as much as I love modern life and access to the internet — because it is truly amazing — I’m also so. tired. of trying to cultivate a spiritual life alone in my house. I’m exhausted by the thought of a witchcraft forum online. I don’t want to see another folk horror film about pagans having rituals. I want to have my own rituals. I’m tired of having to stare into a screen for forty hours for every single one I get to stand in front of a human being, singing in ceremony and togetherness.

After the worst of the pandemic I remember the first time I stepped into a bar full of people in Reykjavík, when we were allowed to bump elbows again, to accidentally feel the heat of someone’s breath on a cheek or to catch an unprovoked waft of a stranger’s scent. I remember feeling unbelievably healthy and relieved then, and simultaneously worrying what if this is illegal again tomorrow? I’m not saying the pandemic was a conspiracy. But I am saying it was a convenient period for those who aim to keep us afraid of one another, and afraid of our embodied togetherness. I became a lot more socially awkward after Covid, how about you? I so long to heal that awkwardness, to invite it to tea and to soothe its worries with some low-pressure, spacious presence.

A badger funeral

Earlier this week I had a day off, and having no inspiration for what to do with myself, I was somewhat guiltily considering whether I ought to just take out my laptop and write an email. That’s when I got a somewhat surprising text from my friend Dougie Mackay: “Do you want to help do a ceremony for a badger? I saw one get knocked down on the road. Thought it might suit your pagan sensibilities.”

I had to consider for a moment, because I usually keep a respectful distance from badgers, as is appropriate for shy wild things with sharp teeth. But knowing this is a friend who deeply cares about animals, and remembering that showing up spontaneously to do things with friends is how we all used to connect before we lived far apart and needed to have “plans” to hang out and “catch up,” I agreed.

When Dougie picked me up a couple of hours later, he told me solemnly about the badger’s sad death on the road. If it weren’t illegal to do so, he said, he would have liked to have honoured it by making something from its pelt, such as a sporran from the Scottish highland regalia. As we drove along a narrow road to the wooded verge where I would meet the precious little creature, I recalled a beautiful badger song I’m familiar with called Old Brock.1 I played a little of the song on my phone for him in the moments before we arrived.

You aren’t allowed to interfere in any way with a badger in Scotland, living or dead, so we stood above the little one by the road and my friend said a prayer apologizing for the carelessness of our people towards the badger’s people, honouring his tenacity and strength and ancient knowledge. I sang the refrain of the song several times in a chant, and he joined me in singing to the badger where he lay:

Down in the dark where no-one can see us,
Down in the dark through the sand and the loam,
Down in the dark where no-one can hear us,
Old Brock he's digging, digging, digging.
Old Brock he's digging, digging his home.

I learned recently that badgers often bury their dead in a sealed-off part of their warren underground. It seemed to me that while we were singing the little guy might receive the song as an invitation to his spirit to join his ancestors in their home underground, along with his still-living kin. I felt deeply moved gazing at the small, even delicate paws of the creature, which nevertheless do so much work digging every day, and I wondered what the badger race might have to teach us about our own hands and their relationship to the world — about our agency.

After seeing so many badgers killed and left unceremoniously at the edge of the road here in Britain, it felt important to have gone out of our way to connect with that one, to make its death meaningful, despite the carelessness that caused it. And it was wonderful that in showing up that day I discovered that a song I already knew was a ceremonial song as well, when sung in a particular context. I had that badger song, in a way, but it wasn’t until that day that I really had it, in an embodied way.

So much of reviving sacred traditional culture is giving ourselves permission to invite the sacred into presence, to authorize ourselves to hold ceremony as life unfolds. Gathering in person is not usually romantic. It’s not a fantasy. It contains errors and awkwardness and time lag and getting the words wrong, but the feeling you carry home with you, the nature of your being in space with other beings, is crucially real.

It’s what you do with it that matters

The podcast episode you listen to today or the Youtube video you watch tonight might inspire you, but it’s the action you take from that inspiration, the leap you decide to make with the charge you receive, that makes the difference in the long term, regardless of how impractical or even self-indulgent it may seem to your mind (eg. “who am I to train to be a sound healer?”). It’s not just dreaming or thinking that changes the situations of your life. It’s the daily, brave, sometimes weird, doing that makes that happen.

Embodied experiences are transformational. What step have you been meaning to take into the material expression of your spiritual longings lately? Can you do something real and embodied in that direction today?

I’m holding a 30-minute info session for Pagan Camp on May 23rd at 9 am PT / 12 pm ET / 5 pm GMT. Sign up here!

You will get an email two days before reminding you to join us. If you can’t make it, feel free to simply reply to this email with your question. :)

Pagan Camp is the gathering I’m hosting from July 27th-30th at Wiston Lodge in the Scottish Borders, just an hour’s drive from the Edinburgh airport. I devised this gathering out of my passionate desire to gather with other pagans in person for real embodied, transformational ceremony and celebration. There is still room to join us there, but the seasons are indeed turning so don’t sit on it if you want a ticket!

get your ticket

I’m sending you love and brightness from a chilly May Thursday in Edinburgh. May you find the gods in everything, for they are always finding you.

Danica

Things I’ve been enjoying lately:

1. This album by Latvian folk-pop group (doing there purely folk thing here) from 2020, a full-hearted call out into the wild winds of the pandemic times.

2. This series (originally a book) about the obviously neurodivergent-coded less-mentioned Bennett sister from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

   I want to call it “high fan fic” in reference to “high fantasy,” because it’s a great example of its genre. I linked Apple TV since many of you are in North America, but I watched it on the BBC here in the UK.

3. Asia Suler interviewed Lindsay Mack on her podcast about Lindsay’s NEW TAROT BOOK AND DECK (YOU GUYS). If you’re new to either of these magic people or already love both, this episode will bring you very good vibes. I also really enjoyed Asia’s recent episode about a secret word that heals everything. ;) Have I mentioned her podcast before? It’s for good reason.

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