This essay is an edited excerpt from the Preface of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony.
The term ‘PaGaian,’ which became part of the title of my work, was conceived in at least two places on the Planet and in opposite hemispheres within a year of each other, in the early years of the twenty-first century, without either inventor being aware of the other’s new expression.
This reaching for a new word, such as “PaGaian/pagaian,” was the reaching for a language, which is a power, to bring together an Earth-based – ‘Pagan’ – spiritual practice indigenous to Western Europe, with recent Western scientific understandings of the planet as a whole living organism – ‘Gaian’ as it has been named,[i] and which by its name acknowledged resonance with ancient Mother Goddess understandings of our Habitat, as an alive sentient being. So, the term ‘PaGaian’ splices together Pagan and Gaian, and it may express a new autochthonic/native context in which humans find themselves: that is, the term may express for some (as it did and does) an indigeneity, a nativity, in these times, of belonging to this Earth, this Cosmos. For myself, the new expression consciously included and centralised female metaphor for sacred practice: that is, practice of relationship with the sacred whole in which we are, and whom I desired to call Mother, and imagine as the Great She.
Human language has been described as “fire in the mind,”[ii] based on the idea that perhaps it developed dramatically when early humans (likely homo erectus)[iii] tamed fire and sat around the fire at night, reflecting on their experiences and telling stories: those gifted with language could affect the group powerfully. As Brian Swimme puts it: “a new selection pressure was brought forth – the pressure of linguistic competence:”[iv] that is, language acted as a part of the biological shaping power of natural selection. And today this selection pressure is shaping the entire planet. Human language, in its many modalities, now determines and sculpts the biosphere, the lithosphere, the atmosphere and the hydrosphere – by the stories we tell, the structures we put in place.
Amongst Celtic peoples, the capacity to speak poetically was a divine attribute, regarded as a transformative power of the Deity, who was named by those peoples as the Goddess Brigid (Brigit): She was a Poet, a Matron of Poetry (along with her capacities of smithcraft and healing). And at Delphi in Greece, the oracular priestesses delivered their prophecies in poetic form: Phemonoe invented the poetic meter, the hexameter. And from Sumer humans have the first Western written records of literature, which is poetry written by the Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna, in approximately 2300 B.C.E. Poetry has been recognised as a powerful modality: Barbara Mor and Monica Sjöö described “poetic thinking” as a wholistic mode, wherein “paradox and ambiguity … can be felt and synthesized. The most ancient becomes the most modern; for in the holographic universe, each ‘subjective’ part contains the ‘objective’ whole, and chronological time is just one aspect of a simultaneous universe.”[v]
Poetry could be described as an “Earth-centred language:”[vi] it has the capacity to hold multivalent aspects of reality, to open to subjective depths, to allow qualitative differences in understanding, hence it is especially suited to expressing and bringing together a multitude of beings. Cosmologist and evolutionary philosopher Brian Swimme and the late cultural historian/geologian Thomas Berry have called for such a language – the kind of language “until now enjoyed only by our poets and mystics” that may express the “highly differentiated unity,”[vii] the organic reality such as Earth is, and such as “Gaia” was understood of old, and in recent scientific theory: that is, as a highly differentiated unity, which any expression must aim to emulate.
I have always understood PaGaian Cosmology as Poetry:[viii] it is not a ‘discourse’ or a theory, or a ‘study’ of something as a theology is, or even as a thealogy may be. It is a speaking withour Place, this Habitat, which is understood to be alive and responsive, and deeply complex: how else may we speak with our dynamic Place of Being, who is always much more than we can imagine? The ceremonial celebration of the complete cycle of Seasonal ceremonies, wherever one is on our Planet, and in all the diverse possibilities, may be experienced and recognised as a Poiesis: that is, the intention is to make a world, to participate in “an action that transforms and continues the world”[ix] … the sacred ceremonies when engaged in fully, are a method of action. They may serve as a catalyst for changing of mind, for personal and cultural change.
PaGaian Cosmology is primarily an action of sacred practice: an art form of ritual/ceremony,[x] which is consistently practised over the full year – the full orbit of Earth around Sun, and which may re-create a sense of sacred space-time of this everyday journey, which all on the Planet make whether conscious or not. The practice is a re-creating – a re-creation, of what I name as Gaia’s Womb: a name for the whole sacred site in which we live, and the sensation/embodiment of which is created with the practice of ceremony of Earth-Sun transitions, the Seasonal Moments, however they manifest in your place.[xi] It is the regular conversation throughout the whole annual cycle – the sacred gestalt – that creates the womb, the space of integral relationship with Source of Being … whom one may understand as the Great She, birthing all, other and self in every moment.
The sacred site thus created is a space that nurtures the sense of the continuum in which we are immersed. Many indigenous cultures still have this sacred relational sense of the world that is nurtured by ceremonies; and many of a variety of cultures in these times of great change seek such a relational sense – and who may identify as being in “recovery from Western civilization.”[xii] I have been engaged for decades now, in re-turning to my indigenous religious heritage of Western Europe, re-creating, and re-inventing a ceremonial practice that celebrates the sacred journey around Sun: it has been an intuitive, organic process synthesizing bits that I have learned from good teachers and scholars, and bits that have just shown up within dreams and imagination, as well as academic research. It has been a shamanic journey: that is, I have relied on my direct lived experience for an understanding of the sacred, as opposed to relying on an external authority, external imposed symbol, story or image. It has not been a pre-scriptive journey: I have scripted it myself, self-scribed it, and in cahoots with the many who participated in the storytelling circles, rituals and classes over decades. The pathway was and is made in the walking. It is part of a new fabric of understanding – created by new texts and contexts, both personal and communal – that have been emerging in recent decades, and continue so.
NOTES:
[i] See James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, the “Gaia Theory.”
[ii] Brian Swimme, Canticle to the Cosmos (CA: Tides Foundation, 1990), video 9.
[iii] See Appendix C, *(31).
[iv] Brian Swimme, Canticle to the Cosmos Study Guide (Boulder CO: Sounds True Audio, 1990), 36, referring to DVD 9, “Fire in the Mind.”
[v] Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987), 41.
[vi] A term used by Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 258.
[vii] As Earth is described by Swimme and Berry, The Universe Story, 259, in the context of calling for “a multivalent language much richer in its symbolic and poetic qualities.”
[viii] Glenys Livingstone, PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion (Nebraska: iUniverse, 2005), 42-45.
[ix] Wikipedia definition of Poiesis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poiesis.
[x] Kathy Jones, Priestess of Avalon, distinguishes ceremony from ritual; see Priestess of Avalon, Priestess of the Goddess (Glastonbury: Ariadne Publications, 2006), 319. I also explain the distinction in Chapter 3.
[xi] It is my experience that the created ceremonies do not need to be in the same exact location throughout the year, though that is good when possible: the ceremonies themselves are received into the sentient Cosmos and part of one’s own sentience, and if regularly practiced – religiously practiced, the sacred site, Gaia’s Womb, may be virtual (intra/meta-physical), as much as it is physical.
[xii] A term used by Chellis Glendinning in the title of her book: My Name is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1994).
REFERENCES:
Glendinning, Chellis. My Name is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1994.
Jones, Kathy. Priestess of Avalon, Priestess of the Goddess. Glastonbury: Ariadne Publications, 2006
Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Nebraska: iUniverse, 2005.
Sjöö, Monica and Mor, Barbara. The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987.
Swimme, Brian. Canticle to the Cosmos. DVD series, CA: Tides Foundation, 1990.
_____________ Canticle to the Cosmos: Study Guide. Boulder CO: Sounds True Audio, 1990.
Swimme, Brian and Berry, Thomas. The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.