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The Pagan Ethos

a nonlinear notebook on postmodern pagan history, politics, metaphysics, and theology

I have been brewing a large writing project in my head for a long time now, a project that explores the intesection of postmodern paganism and politics. In short, my view is that Paganism -- its people, its worldview, its history -- is essential to understanding the current global situation. Indeed, that the suppression of pagan ideals over the past 500 years is intimately intertwined with the global political machinations that continue to plague us.\n\nAt the moment, I'm in the research mode of this writing project, and therefore I am using this page to add quotes that I find interesting, and also to jot down some basic ideas and questions that occur to me as I do this research.\n\nLately, I'm going through //Empire// and adding quotes that seem relevant.

ThePaganEthos\n[[Author]]\nMainOutline\nCurrentStatus\nToDo\nUsefulExternalLinks\n[[Empire]]

MainOutline\nCurrentStatus\nToDo\nUsefulExternalLinks\n

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<<<\nWe should emphasize that we use "Empire" here not as a //metaphor//, which would require demonstration of the resemblances between today's world order and the Empires of Rome, China, the Americas, and so forth, but rather as a //concept//, which calls primarily for a theoretical approach. The concept of Empire is characterized fundamentally by a lack of boundaries: Empire's rule has no limits. First and foremost, then, the concept of Empire posits a regime that effectively encompasses the spatial totality, or really that rules over the entire "civilized" world. No territorial boundaries limit its reign. Second, the concept of Empire presents itself not as a historical regime originating in conquest, but rather as an order that effective suspends history and thereby fixes the existing state of affairs for eternity. From the perspective of Empire, this is the way things will always be and the way there were always meant to be. In other words, Empire presents its rule not as a transitory moment in the movement of history, but as a regime with no temporal boundaries and in this sense outside of history or at the end of history. Third, the rule of Empire operates on all registers of the social order extending down to the depths of the social world. Empire not only manages a territory and a population but also creates the very world it inhabits. It not only regulates human interactions but also seeks directly to rule over human nature. The object of its rule is social life in its entirety, and thus Empire presents the paradigmatic form of biopower. Finally, although the practice of Empire is continually bathed in blood, the concept of Empire is always dedicated to peace -- a perpetual and universal peace outside of history.\n<<<

<<<\nAs Thucydides, Livy, and Tacitus all teach us (along with Machiavelli commenting on their work), Empire is formed not on the basis of force itself but on the basis of the capacity to present force as being in the service of right and peace. All interventions of the imperial armies are solicited by one or more of the parties involved in an already existing conflict. Empire is not born of its own will but rather it is //called// into being and constituted on the basis of its capacity to resolve conflicts. Empire is formed and its intervention becomes juridically legitimate only when it is already inserted into the chain of international consensuses aimed at resolving existing conflicts.\n<<<

<<<\nEmpire is emerging today as the center that supports the globalization of productive networks and casts its widely inclusive net to try to envelop all power relations within its world order -- and yet at the same time it deploys a powerful police function against the new barbarians and the rebellious slaves who threaten its order. The power of Empire appears to be subordinate to the fluctuations of local power dynamics and to the shifting, partial juridical orderings that attempt, but never fully succeed, to lead back to a state of normalcy in the name of the "exceptionality" of the administrative procedures.\n<<<

Brezsny, Rob, //Pronoia is the Antidote For Paranoia: How the Whole World is Conspiring to Shower You With Blessings// (Berkeley, CA: Frog, Ltd., 2005).\n\nCaffentzis, Constantine George, //Clipped Coins, Abused Words, & Civil Government: John Locke's Philosophy of Money// (New York: Autonomedia, 1989).\n\nFederici, Silvia, //Caliban and the Witch: Women, The Body and Primitive Accumulation// (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2004).\n\nHardt, Michael and Antonio Negri, //Empire// (Cambridge, Massachussetts: Harvard University Press, 2000).\n\nHardt, Michael and Antonio Negri, //Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire// (New York: Penguin Books, 2004).\n\nStarhawk, //Dreaming The Dark: Magic, Sex & Politics// (Boston: Beacon Press, 1982).\n\nWhitehead, Alfred North, //Science and the Modern World// (New York: The Free Press, 1967).\n\nWhitehead, Alfred North, //Process and Reality (Corrected Edition)// (New York: The Free Press, 1978).

<<<\nThe enemies that Empire opposes today may present more of an ideological threat than a military challenge, but nonetheless the power of Empire exercised through force and all the deployments that guarantee its effectiveness are already very advanced technologically and solidly consolidated politically.\n<<<

<<<\nIn the genesis of Empire there is indeed a rationality at work that can be recognized not so much in terms of the juridical tradition but more clearly in the often hidden history of industrial management and the political uses of technology. \n<<<

<<<\nAlthough Empire may have played a role in putting an end to colonialism and imperialism, it nonetheless constructs its own relationships of power based on exploitation that are in many respects more brutal than those it destroyed. The end of the dialectic of modernity has not resulted int he end of the dialectic of exploitation. Today nearly all of humanity is to some degree absorbed within or subordinated to the networks of capitalist exploitation. We see now an ever more extreme separation of a small minority that controls enormous wealth from multitudes that live in poverty at the limit of powerlessness. The geographical and racial lines of oppression and exploitation that were established during the era of colonialism and imperialism have in many respects not declined but instead increased exponentially.\n\nDespite recognizing all this, we insist on asserting that the construction of Empire is a step forward in order to do away with any nostalgia for the power structures that preceded it and refuse any political strategy that involves returning to that old arrangement, such as trying to resurrect the nation-state to protect against global capital. We claim that Empire is better in the same way that Marx insists that capitalism is better than the forms of society and modes of production that came before it. Marx's view is grounded on a healthy and lucid disgust for the parochial and rigid hierarchies that preceded capitalist society as well as on a recognition that the potential for liberation is increased in the new sutiation. In the same way today we can see that Empire does away with the cruel regimes of modern power and also increases the potential for liberation. \n<<<

<<<\nWe can certainly recognize real obstacles that block the communication of struggles. One such obstacle is the absence of a recognition of a common enemy against which the struggles are directed. Beijing, Los Angeles, Nablus, Chiapas, Paris, Seoul: the situations all seem utterly particular, but in fact they all directly attack the global order of Empire and seek a real alternative. Clarifying the nature of the common enemy is thus an essential political task. A second obstacle, which is really corollary to the first, is that there is no common language of struggles that could "translate" the particular language of each into a cosmopolitan language. Struggles in other parts of the world and even our own struggles seem to be written in an incomprehensible foreign language. This too points toward an important political task: to construct a new common language that facilitates communication, as the languages of anti-imperialism and proletarian internationalism did for the struggles of a previous era. Perhaps this needs to be a new type of communication that functions not on the basis of resemblances but on the basis of differences: a communication of singularities.\n<<<

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<<<\nEurope and modernity are neither unitary nor pacific constructions, but rather from the beginning were characterized by struggle, conflict, and crisis. We identify three moments in the constitution of European modernity that articulate the initial figure of the modern concept of sovereignty: first, the revolutionary discovery of the plane of immanence; second, the reaction against these immanent forces and the crisis in the form of authority; and third, the partial and temporary resolution of this crisis in the formation of the modern state as a locus of sovereignty that transcends and mediates the plane of immanent forces. \n<<<

<<<\nIt all began with a revolution. In Europe, between 1200 and 1600, across distances that only merchants and armies could travel and only the invention of the printing press would later bring together, something extraordinary happened. Humans declared themselves masters of their own lives, producers of cities and history, and inventors of heavens. They inherited a dualistic consciousness, a hierarchical vision of society, and a metaphysical idea of science; but they handed down to future generations an experimental idea of science, a constituent conception of history and cities, and they posed being as an immanent terrain of knowledge and action. The thought of this initial period, born simultaneously in politics, science, art, philosophy, and theology, demonstrates the radicality of the forces at work in modernity.\n<<<

<<<\nIn the seventeenth century the concept of modernity as crisis was definitively consolidated. The century began with the burning of Giordano Bruno at the stake, and it went on to see monstrous civil wars break out in France and England, and above all it witnessed the horrible spectacle of thirty years of German civil war. At the same time, the European conquest of the Americas and the slaughter and enslavement of its native populations proceeded with ever-increasing intensity. In the second half of the century, monarchic absolutism seemed definitively to block the course of freedom in the countries of continental Europe. Absolutism sought to fix the concept of modernity and strip it of the crisis that definies it through the deployment of a new armory of transcendentals. At the same time, outside of Europe conquest slowly gave way to colonialism, and the precarious search for gold, riches, and plunder was progressively displaced by trade exclusives, stable forms of production, and the African slave trade. The seventeenth century, however -- and this is what makes it so ambiguous -- was a fragile, baroque century. From the abysses of the social world always arose the memory of what it tried to bury.\n<<<

<<<\nThe counterrevolutionary project to resolve the crisis of modernity unfolded in the centuries of the Enlightenment. The primary task of this Enlightenment was to dominate the idea of immanence without reproducing the absolute dualism of medieval culture by constructing a transcendental apparatus capable of disciplining a multitude of formerly free subjects. The ontological dualism of the culture of the ancien regime had to be replaced by a functional dualism, and the crisis of modernity had to be resolved by means of adequate mechanisms of mediation. It was paramount to avoid the multitude's being understood, a la Spinoza, in a direct, immediate relation with divinity and nature, as the ethical producer of life and the world. On the contrary, in every case mediation had to be imposed on the complexity of human relations.\n<<<

<<<\nPolitics resides at the center of metaphysics because modern European metaphysics arose in response to the challenge of the liberated singularities and the revolutionary constitution of the multitude. It functioned as an essential weapon of the second mode of modernity insofar as it provided a transcendent apparatus that could impose order on the multitude and prevent it from organizing itself spontaneously and expressing its creativity autonomously. \n<<<

<<<\nEuropean modernity is inseparable from capitalism. This central relationship between the form and the content of modern sovereignty is fully articulated in the work of Adam Smith. Smith begins with a theory of industry that poses the contradiction between private enrichment and public interest. A first synthesis of these two levels is confided to the "invisible hand" of the market: the capitalist "intends only his own gain," but he is "led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention." This first synthesis, however, is precarious and fleeting. Political economy, considered a branch of the science of the administrator and legislator, must go much further in conceiving the synthesis. It must understand the "invisible hand" of the market as a product of political economy itself, which is thus directed toward constructing the conditions of the autonomy of the market: "All systems either of preference or of restraint, therefore, being thus completley taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord." In this case, too, however, the synthesis is not at all guaranteed. In effect, a third passage is necessary. What is needed is for the state, which is minimal but effective, to make the well-being of private individuals coincide with the public interest, reducing all social functions and laboring activities to one measure of value. \n<<<

<<<\nModern European sovereignty is capitalist sovereignty, a form of command that overdetermines the relationship between individuality and universality as a function of the development of capital.\n...\nWhen the synthesis of sovereignty and capital is fully accomplished, and the transcendence fo power is completely transformed into a transcendental exercise of authority, then sovereignty becomes a political machine that rules across the entire society. Through the workings of the sovereignty machine the multitude is in every moment transformed into an ordered totality.\n<<<

<<<\nIf we are to conceive Man as separate from nature, then Man does not exist. This recognition is precisely the death of Man.\n<<<

<<<\nOnce we recognize our posthuman bodies and minds, once we see ourselves for the simians and cyborgs we are, we then need to explore the //vis viva//, the creative powers that animate us as they do all of nature and actualize our potentialities. This is humanism after the death of Man; what Foucault calls "le travail de soi sur soi ('the work of oneself on oneself')," the continuous constituent project to create and re-create ourselves and our world.\n<<<

\n''Prologue''\n# //The Signs:// What Has Been Lost?\n## "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention": Why do so many people today feel a vaporous sense that something is deeply, fundamentally wrong? That despite the wonders of our postmodern world, there is a negative energy pattern discernible underneath nearly everything we see? \n### war\n### unprecedented weather patterns\n### injustice\n### slavery\n### environmental destruction\n### stratification of wealth\n### systematic deceit by those in power\n### //[[A Culture of Fear|http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465014909/sr=8-1/qid=1155821503/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-5415747-7240814?ie=UTF8]]//\n### //Empire//\n## Many of these things can be traced back to one point in history, 300-500 years ago:\n### The Burning Times\n### The Rise of Capitalism\n### Land Enclosure\n### Urbanization\n### Industrialization\n## The problems we see today is the logical extension of this history, a history that can be characterized primarily as //a move away from pagan values//.\n## This book seeks to elucidate what these pagan values are, and explore not only how the world has not only moved away from these values, resulting in the problems described above, but also how we as pagans can begin to reclaim and reassert our values, providing the most effective mode of resistance to //Empire.// In short: the pagans and the activists have much to learn from one another.\n# This book is about world change in both theory and practice. Active-ists must have their theory in order to guide their actions, and theorists cannot rest in the abstract realms without action. Both are necessary, and this book seeks to elucidate ways that pagans can enact change, can work magic to create their world.\n''Part One: The World in the Pagan''\n# //Posing The Fundamental Question:// What is "Paganism"?\n## "pagan" is Latin for "redneck"\n## not as much a religion as a lifestyle, a worldview, an //ethos//\n## Paganism has a very specific context that is more than spiritual; neopaganism is, in many ways, incomplete without a broad view of what paganism is\n## Paganism is best defined in terms of its //values//. Next question is therefore: What are Pagan values? To understand what pagan values are, we must look at history and politics as well as metaphysics and theology.\n# //Historical Contexts:// The shift away from Paganism\n## The "Dark Ages" No More: the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, and the Rise of Capitalism\n## The End of Magic: Mechanism and Mechanistic Thinking in Science, Economics, and Politics\n## Moments of Force: The Witch Hunts and the Enclosure movements\n### We can still today smell the lingering smoke of the Burning Times\n## Each of these events represents a step away from the pagan worldview, a paradigm shift in popular consciousness imposed by force and horrific violence\n# //Political Machinations:// subsumption into //Empire//\n## Economics and Capitalism\n## Property and Enclosure\n## Wageslavery and Urbanization\n# //Metaphysical Organisms//\n## Magic: reality is plural and mutable\n## Oneness\n## Philosophy of Organism/Process: reality is a verb\n## Consciousness and Experience\n# //Theological Maps//\n## pagan conceptions of the divine are better described as "images" than "models", multifaceted, individualistic, gnostic (ie, based in direct experience)\n## Immanence and Panentheism\n## God/Goddess, balance in all things including gender\n## Cycles of the Divine\n## Attunement: the Grail as symbol of reconnection with the divine\n''Part Two: The Pagan in the World''\n# //Wisdom//\n## //wicce//, witch, "wise one"\n## do not specialize; cultivate many interests\n# //Magic and Nature//\n## Reality Crafting: Imagination, Will, Work\n### Intent\n### Savvy\n## Energy Work\n### Breathing\n### Grounding\n### Entrainment\n### Raising and directing energy\n### Power as energy: power-over vs. power-from-within etc.\n## Attunement to natural cycles and divine immanence\n# //Personal Stewardship and Authenticity//\n## Existentialism: the magic-worker as the "existential hero"\n## "it is better to be authentic, and deal with that energy, than to be inauthentic, and deal with blocked energy"\n# //Commons/Community//\n## compassion\n## "shared joy is increased; shared sorrow is lessened"\n# //The Pagan Ethos//\n## 'An It Harm None, Do As You Will': wageslavery is not following one's will\n## Pronoia\n## Be a good commoner. Minimize your participation in capital and land ownership. If you do own land, steward it well. Share it. \n## //Active//-ism. Pagans are by definition active creatures. Activism is a form of magic, ie, directing change in accordance with will

The main component of my to-do list is twofold: first, do lots of research; and second, do lots of writing. Hopefully this page will help with both. But specifically, in terms of reading, here's a start:\n* History\n** Whitehead, //Science and the Modern World//\n** Carolyn Merchant, //The Death of Nature//\n** Zinn, //A People's History of the United States//\n* Politics\n** Hardt/Negri\n*** finish //Empire//\n*** read //Multitude//\n** Midnight Notes\n*** Brush up on oil writings\n*** Silvia Federici, //Caliban and the Witch//\n** Marx\n*** //Capital//\n*** //Grundrisse//\n* Metaphysics\n** Whitehead, //Process and Reality//\n* Theology\n* Paganism\n** Activism\n*** Starhawk, //[[Webs of Power|http://www.starhawk.org/writings/webspower.html]]//\n*** Starhawk, //Dreaming The Dark//\n* MetaDocument\n** MainOutline ... continue to develop, think big-picture, organize ideas into a coherent whole\n** organize tags, in accord with MainOutline

<<<\nIn all his writings of the 1690s Locke saw himself as the chief spokesman against the public defenders of either the camp of religious enthusiasts or the den of monetary and semantic criminals. His efforts were not merely verbal; for example, he arranged for Newton to leave Cambridge and become Warden of the Mint. From this position Newton became the detector, interrogator and prosecutor of the actual miscreants, helping fill Newgate and providing much employment for the hangman at Tyburn.\n<<<

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http://JWL.Freakwitch.net/notebook/

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I, the owner/author of this site, am [[JWL|http://JWL.Freakwitch.net/]], also known as James W Lindenschmidt. I am using this site as a nonlinear notebook to categorize and organize various ideas for a large writing project exploring the intersection of modern neopaganism with history, politics, metaphysics, and theology. Feel free to poke around.

If I'm using "The Pagan Ethos" for the title of this site and/or the book that comes from it, then I should probably explain a bit about what I mean. This entails defining both "pagan" and "ethos," and then talking some about the intersection of the two, not to mention a justification of using the singular "the."\n\nBut basically what I mean is this: I believe that postmodern neopaganism traces its heritage through its history and its core set of values, values that are rooted in metaphysics and a magical way of viewing the world as intimately interconnected. These connections must be the foundation for our //ethos//, for our way-of-dwelling-in-the-world. These core values can be derived from metaphysics and theology as well as history and politics.\n\nIn addition, a large part of anything calling itself an //ethos// must be about //praxis//; there is a large difference between a "practicing" pagan and an inactive pagan, just as there is between a "practicing" catholic and a bitter ex-Catholic. //This book is equally for pagans new to theory and theorists new to paganism.//\n\n''I need to elaborate 4 or 5 central tenets of a pagan ethos, and base the entire book around these ideas...''\n\n# [[P=EC]]\n# Organism over Mechanism\n# Commons over Capital\n# Attunement to natural rhythms\n\nHere are some basic ideas about what is entailed in a pagan ethos:\n* organic thinking over mechanistic thinking\n** oneness of all things, attunement\n** Commons over capital\n*** land stewardship, not land ownership\n*** commoning ("to produce and hold in common") over wageslavery\n* The universe is magical\n** "now that science has proven that magic works, I'd like an apology"\n** consciousness and new physics\n* respect for nature\n** attunement to natural rhythms\n* panentheistic theology\n** God is "in" everything\n** pantheons are a useful way to connect to the divine\n* The Paradox of Life\n** Life is Sacred\n** yet, Life feeds on Life (ie, vegetarianism)\n** death is also sacred

I just saw this book and wanted to notate it: [[The Rotting Goddess: Origins of the Witch in Classical Antiquity|http://bookstore.autonomedia.org/index.php?main_page=pubs_product_book_info&cPath=20&products_id=136]] from Autonomedia.

[[Chaosophy|http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=8858&ttype=2]]:\n<<<\nChaosophy is a groundbreaking introduction to Guattari's theories on "schizo-analysis": a process meant to replace Freudian interpretation with a more pragmatic, experimental, and collective approach rooted in reality. Unlike Freud, Guattari believes that schizophrenia is an extreme mental state induced by the capitalist system itself, which keeps enforcing neurosis as a way of maintaining normality. Guattari's post-Marxist vision of capitalism provides a new definition not only of mental illness, but also of the micropolitical means of its subversion.\n<<<

[[Against The Megamachine|http://bookstore.autonomedia.org/index.php?main_page=pubs_product_book_info&cPath=71&products_id=5]]:\n<<<\nUrban-industrial civilization is a vast junkyard. Everything, from the planets to the cells of our bodies, is contaminated with its poisons. What it means to be human is now in dangerous flux, while the entire edifice sways over us, threatening to crash down in ruins. The green world in which we evolved is being shredded by our instruments and our way of life. David Watson's wide-ranging essays published in the Fifth Estate, one of North America's most original radical journals ponder such themes as the state, empire and war; humanity's tragic relation to the natural world; and the contemporary mass society generated by industrial capitalism and modern technology. His impassioned critique offers a vision of social transformation open to diverse possibilities, and suggests where a new politics must begin: as a radical challenge to the mystique of progress, in defense of nature, memory and spirit.\n<<<

[[Evolutionary Witchcraft|http://www.thorncoyle.com/evolwitch.htm]] is an interesting-looking book by T. Thorn Coyle:\n<<<\nWe need to connect, to find the sacred in our lives right now, rather than on some future day of transcendence and redemption. In a time of global and environmental crises, a religion that firmly connects us to the earth is not only appealing, but crucial. In Evolutionary Witchcraft (Tarcher - Penguin hardcover/October 1, 2004), Coyle invites us to uncover the dignity of our souls, to connect with both the natural world and realms unseen to wholly embrace ourselves and see what emerges from that crucible of contradictions: strength, compassion, generosity, joy, darkness, and light. It calls us to our wild, magical core-the source to transform our selves and the world.\n<<<

A central image of this writing project should be smoke. Burning times. Related image is the smoke screen, ie, coverture. Obfuscation. Mystification.

Power = Energy x Consciousness\n* Energy \n** Potential\n** Kinetic\n** Matter\n** Electromagnetic\n** Qi\n** Entrainment\n* Consciousness\n** Thought \n** Feeling\n** Imagination\n** Will\n** 8-circuit model\n** "Be The One Who Watches"\n\nClearly one of the problems with Empire is that it is the largest example of power-over at work. Or so we assume. But what is the nature of Empire's power-over? How do They(tm) get and hold power? One answer is contained in the above equation, and the reason so much energy is expended in societal programming, media, etc. With so many people telling the same stories, the power of the programmer is increased.

In general, paganism favors the intensity and immediacy of direct experience over the vacariousness and abstraction of imagined experience, such as imagining the experience of others in television, books, and other media. There is an energy differential between these types of experience. Immediacy has an energetic intensity bundled with it.\n\nHaving said that, it is possible to experience intensity during imagined experiences. But in general, pagans will seek to intensify these experiences using direct stimuli.

In terms of the "isms" I am fond of, Paganism, Anarchism, Buddhism, and Marxism, it occurs to me that Buddhism and Marxism are best employed as ways of understanding The Problems That Face Us Today. Whereas Paganism and Anarchism are more about what to do, how to live as solutions to The Problems.

The process by which mechanistic thinking loses sight of the whole is called 'scientific reductionism,' or, that The Problem is "reduced" to a single, isolated variable that can be experimented upon without compounded causes. While this methodology is an undeniably powerful tool, it is important to remember that it "reduces" the whole of reality, and therefore can never give us a complete picture. This is the tragedy of mechanism, and perhaps the most salient example of Whitehead's "fallacy of misplaced concreteness."\n\nAnother way of saying this: "scientists study what scientists can see." Proximally and for the most part, the vast web of interconnectedness remains invisible.

<<<\nFirst in England and then throughout Europe, however, there was a growing recognition that this happy rural peasant world had disappeared or was fast in the process of disappearing. And yet long after it had disappeared in reality the peasant world remained in European literature in the form of nostalgia for times gone by, for a corresponding traditional structure of feeling, set of values, or form of life.\n>>>

Multitude is "an open network of singularities that links together on the basis of the common they share and the common they produce" (//Multitude// p. 129).\n\nMultitude, therefore, contains the classic "the one and the many" dilemma, and can also be understood as a social "open network." The dynamics and movements of the multitude should, then, be able to be modelled via contemporary networking analyses, ie, open source.