“Being Body” and “Of Oak and Wolf”

As you may know, I am currently completing a manuscript for a book to be published later this year entitled Being Pagan.

It’s written with an eye towards helping the reader re-enchant their world, leading them through the pagan worldview in aspects such as connection to time, to land, to body, and to the natural world.

I’ve been publishing essays based off of chapters from the manuscript, which I am also currently using as the text for the course of the same name I am currently instructing.

One of these essays has already been published publicly, and I gave supporters the link for the second of them. Two more are now available.

The first is Being Body, in which I discuss our alienation from the body and the problems that externalizing the body (treating it as something we have, rather than something we are) causes.

There are other results of this alienation that are often subtle and difficult to unravel. For instance, because we make a distinction between ourselves and our bodies, we often tend to prioritize our thoughts and thinking over our physical reality. This can lead to one of the most common ailments we see discussed on social media posts: anxiety.

Anxiety means “troubled mind” in Latin, and usually refers to a sense of apprehension, worry, or fear that we cannot shake. In moments of anxiety, our thinking tends to circle back on itself, cycling dark and worried thoughts repeatedly through our heads despite no obvious or definable external cause.

Anxiety feels to be “in our heads,” and this is certainly true. But it’s easy—especially in such moments—to forget that our heads are part of the body, that mind isn’t some external thing but part of the very same flesh that composes the rest of our physical existence. Oftentimes, anxiety can turn out to be related to something else occurring within the body, a “symptom” rather than a cause.

The second, which was just released today, is called Of Oak and Wolf, and it’s a discussion of pagan and animist way of relating to animals and plants not as objects, products, or servants but rather kin:

Something that many anthropologists who have worked to understand animist views of the world have repeatedly noticed is that such peoples see all living non-human things as kin, as ancestors, and as inspirited beings. The deer that is hunted for food is not just an animal separate from humans, but rather a being related to them. The same is said for plants, who often are seen as “mothers” or “fathers,” beings with familial and parental roles in relationship to humans.

To kill and eat such a relative, then, is to kill and eat a part of your family, something that is otherwise forbidden and considered a profound crime when done to humans. So, for animist, pagan peoples, a sacred taboo needed constantly to be violated just to survive.

For such peoples, the response to this violation was not to pretend that animals and plants were somehow “less” than humans or were created to serve (as with the monotheist solution, in which a singular god declares he has made all the world for the use of humans), but rather to be in constant reciprocal relationship with those beings.

Rituals of gratitude and placation were performed for the animals that were killed: sometimes as simple as a prayer of thanks, sometimes much more elaborate. These rituals also manifested and maintained a commitment of obligation to these other beings, a declaration or acknowledgment of responsibility to the plants and animals that humans relied upon.

To take the life of a deer or a tree, then, was to enter into a relationship where the human became responsible for making sure other deer and other trees thrived. It also meant a responsibility to honor the life of the being killed, by using the body of a tree or a deer in a way that did not insult the being whose life was taken.

All four released essays are now available for online reading or downloading as pdfs. Here are the links:

• Connecting to Pagan Time (public)

• Connecting to Land (supporter only1 until 5 August)

• Being Body (supporter only until 5 September)

• Of Oak and Wolf (supporter only until 5 September)