Day 1: Why Saxon Paganism?
I seem to come back to this question again and again as I tease out the threads of my spiritual tapestry, drifting between paths and even religions. Right now it seems extra poignant because of the discussions I’ve been having with Eric, my Jewish boyfriend, who continually teases me that I’m going to convert and become Jewish.
When I first began dating him I lacked any knowledge about Jews whatsoever, only my insistence that Israel was an aggressor state, that Jews were oppressing the poor Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and that Jewish settlements and military retaliations were singularly to blame for the stalled peace process. (Let me tell you how quickly that came to an end. I have since tried to understand more about the conflict, but it’s difficult when my favorite leftist authors and organizations, like Noam Chomsky and Democracy Now, are also seemingly staunchly anti-Israel.)
Being the religion junkie that I am (and hating ignorance perhaps most of all), I quickly proceeded to check out a bunch of books from the library on the topic. But, strangely, I had to hide the books and my thoughts from my parents. I began to understand the extent of anti-semitism when I realized my parents were more concerned about me learning about Judaism that witchcraft. My mother has even bought me Llewellyn almanacs and calendars before, but reading about the Torah and mitzvot and Israel? Awkward. “Watch out for Jewish boys,” my grandmother warned me, “they only want Jewish girls who can give them Jewish babies.” The message was hammered into me by my peers when they began to seriously suggest that I stop seeing him solely on the grounds of him being Jewish. One of these friends lives with a Wiccan, so you can’t say that they’re simply an intolerant person in general. To spite them, I now tease that I’m going to become “a Jewess brood mother” and will like it, and they can go fuck themselves. They’ve stopped bothering me about it since. (To Eric I play the other side of the coin, calling myself the shiksa he wishes he didn’t love.)
My resolve made all the stronger by my friends and family’s assholery, I tore through the books quickly. I was fascinated by the traditions of intellectual debate, the concepts of loving-kindness and charity, and the theological flexibility that comes with Judaism being more of a culture than a religion. I found out my Russian paternal grandmother likely had Jewish roots, though that meant nothing for my own status as gentile. I even began to consider what my home might look like if I observed Shabbat, went to Temple, and raised my children to be Jewish. I imagined a wedding with my Jewish groom, my Jewish best friend as the maid of honor, a chuppah, a ketubah, and the sound of breaking glass. I bought a book on converting and learned everything I could about the process, from the bet din to the mikvah.
It wasn’t too far from what I believed, I told myself. The mystery of Elohim’s simultaneous plurality and singularity could explain my polytheism, and I had always held the pantheistic belief that there is a divinity that comprises the entirety of the universe and even the gods who are otherwise distinct, called the All. It wouldn’t be too different to change the “All” to “Adonai,” to go from the wheel of the year to the Jewish calendar, wiccecraeft to Kabbalah, galdr to davening. I thought the things that I wanted from paganism were there, more strongly, in Judaism: actively partaking in ritual at home, a strong community to connect with, a God whose tenets matched my own liberal philosophy. Most of all, I would have a partner to share these things with, reluctant though he might be.
But I began to grow frustrated that for all that I would have to dedicate myself entirely and be essentially a textbook Jew to convert, Eric would always be more Jewish than me (having had a Jewish mother) even though he would be more lax about observing holidays, studying Torah, and believing in God in the Jewish sense. He wanted to see his children bar or bat mitzvah’ed but didn’t care about much else. The important part was being Jewish, not living Jewish.
More than that, I couldn’t shake my own Gods. A monochrome view of the world would never quite suit me, and where did my totemic inclinations and magical aspirations fit in? I couldn’t convert if I was still a pagan at heart, even if I could celebrate family and toast to l’chaim alongside the Jews I loved. That leaves any children I have with him without a solid Jewish identity, but I can’t bring myself to change who I am for the sake of others. I also like to think that would be a sin in Judaism, and I respect the tradition too much to convert without my heart and soul in it.
What this brief episode of interest in Judaism has done in my life is to really teach me about where I stand and why I gravitated towards paganism in the first place. What makes it so that I cannot join the house of Yisrael, no matter how much of a headache that might save me down the line?
Simply, monotheism does not honor life in all its myriad forms the way paganism does for me. By distilling everything down to One, a good deal of variation is lost, from the dark to the fertile to the righteous to the warlike. Paganism is more sensitive to these nuances and addresses them directly, either in the festivals or the Gods themselves, the elements and the spirits of place, plant, and beast. And I’m pretty sure I cannot commune with Falcon in ritual and then go on to recite Kaddish at dinner, or maintain my altar and hang a mezuzah on my front door (unless some of my housemates want to, but that’s their choice).
And so I’m back to where I started, just in time to seriously prepare for a year-and-a-day course of study starting on the 31st, when I will be celebrating Hallows. I had given myself that deadline back in June, not realizing it would be just enough time to work through my fascination and trepidation with becoming Jewish and come full circle back to Saxon paganism. On that night I’ll honor Hel again for the first time in years, who marked my first true mystical—if absolutely terrifying—experience, and remember the ancestors who brought me here as the veil between worlds thins. The late fall/early winter has always been my most spiritual time, with its dark, rainy nights and cold, cloudy days, and so I will begin and end my course of study with its power.
I ask for faith now, Holy Ones,
and in this, I gather up the last wisps
of what faith I have left, that You
will hear me, that some among You
may feel moved to guide me, that but
one of You will speak to me, aloud or
in the profound silence of the soul
and that I may receive into my hands
all the tools I need to build that faith into
nothing so much as a mighty fortress,
but the crumbling wall which, I know,
I shall have to scale again and again.– Elizabeth Vongvisith, Be Thou My Hearth and Shield
