Category Archives: Urban Spirituality

Polytheism and Retrofuturism

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Retrofuturism is, in essence, a philosophy that has been highly influential in late 20th and early 21st Century art, music, design, and (typically underground) fashion. I’d says its beginnings can be traced to the 1960s, when the first conscious revival of a once-popular movement —Art Deco— took place, though the movement really started to take off in the 1970s. While Isadora Duncan was certainly a prototypical and extreme retrofuturist, her influence, during her time, was limited to dance, so clearly while she can be argued to have scattered some seeds for retrofuturism, the movement did not take root with her. Streamline Moderne design, popular in the 1940s, is sometimes erroneously described as an Art Deco revival, but it is, in actuality, merely a continuation of the movement; where Art Nouveau of the 1890s and 1900s can be described as “organic”, Art Deco can be described as “mineral” in its look and feel, especially its penchant for symmetric geometry — Streamline, on the other hand, is organic lines with an Art Deco sensibility, thus it is not a true revival. But I digress.

In simplest terms, Retrofuturism is taking the best of the past and the best of the present and moulding it with a progressive-mindedness that looks toward the future. Steampunk is retrofuturist. By extension, Diesel- and decopunk are retrofuturist, and Atompunk is retrofuturist. While the Mod subculture was initially a very modern-minded subculture, its deep connections to the Phil Spector/Tamla-Motown sound and a 1960s-influenced aesthetic have assured its evolution into a retrofuturist subculture, albeit not the most conscious retrofuturist subculture, when compared to most others. Roxy Music is a retrofuturist group. As is DEVO. As is Joe Jackson. Jim Henson’s life-long love of puppetry and apparent knowledge of its history, and not to mention showing off that knowledge in his abilities to create quality entertainment intended for an adult audience (yet silly enough that children didn’t need to understand The Muppet Show, for example, in order to enjoy it) is inherently retrofuturist. Guy Maddin is retrofuturist, though he prefers “ultra-conformist”, which, to be honest, is actually best at describing his techniques, which are seldom more evolved than the industry standard of 1933. The work of McDermott & McGough is absolutely retrofuturist with an emphasis on the retro. Electroswing is retrofuturist with an emphasis on the future. Neofolk is a genre that is, at its heart, retrofuturist but in practise, some bands identify more closely with certain flavours of Fascism, which is, at its heart, Traditionalist —but in all honesty (and more knowledge of music than most other people who can wear the “Goth DJ” hat), Leonard Cohen and Nico were among the first musicians to be described as “neofolk” or even “dark folk”, and Johnny Indovina of Human Drama considers much of his music to be some form of “neo-folk”, and it would be hard (at the absolute least) to consider any of those musos to be Fascists or Traditionalists.

The modern pagan and polytheist movements are, too, typically retrofuturist with a few exceptions. Chaos magic seems decidedly modernist with some hints of straight-up futurism. There is also a segment of reconstructionist polytheists that are more concerned with an anti-progressive notion of “the ancients” to the point that it’s easy to call them Traditionalist or even Anti-modernist; retrofuturists, by their nature, tend to avoid such types as we find their non-interest in a living society in favour of an arbitrary point in the ancient past (often long pre-dating even a century or two prior Christianity’s birth, much less its rise to prominence) to be rather silly.

If there’s anything that a vast majority of pagans and polytheists have in common, it’s an interest in re-shaping the present and future with knowledge about the past influencing this form. This is a variant on the two major themes of retrofuturist creativity: The first is the “retrofuture purist” form, which is celebrating the past’s idea of the future. The second is to re-imagine the past as seen with eyes of the present that are, at the very least, mindful of the future (though retrofuturist art tends to emphasise the future). The tendencies of pagans and polytheists to take what is known of the ancient past polytheistic religions and adapt them to not only modern life but a future-mindedness makes this the ultimate retrofuturist religious movement; Gnostics probably come in at a close second place.

While an degree of tradition is important in most pagan and polytheist religions, they are not typically defined by their traditions, but by the cultures they sprang from and the communities they are shared by, which essentially creates a vision of the future.

Sacred City (the film)

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“At night, the city is no more full of dreams than at any other —that’s where people go wrong. They think the daytime city —full of money, and work, and people who know where they’re going— is the real one; but I look all the time for the real city, and I know it’s not as simple as that. It’s not simple at all. You might think you might find it by digging holes, or staring at the pavement, but it’s not there in mortar and stone and brick. The real city is alive, and breathing. You can look for it in the buildings, and the way they’re built, and why, and how they look in the light. What some-one called ‘the spectacle’ organised by architecture. But how can that be the real city? The real city is not organised, by any-one; it just uses certain places to make itself seen, and the best architects know this and don’t over-reach themselves.

“…that which gives me a feeling I’ve never known before, but I’ll call it a religious feeling, cos I’ve no other word for it. When I see all of this, this city, full of light and sound, and there’s so much that you can’t even imagine knowing all of it. So beautiful and so hideous, all at once. It’s then I start to think there might be a new god, that only lives in cities. It’s not everyday you discover a new god, especially such a powerful and ambivalent one. Sometimes a drunken, stinking, dangerous god, certainly; but still, the correct response to a god, or goddess, of any kind is worship. I don’t care what any-one says, and that’s what I want to do. I feel like St. Joan must’ve felt when she heard the voices, like a blasphemer, but I think we could do with more gods, than less, and I’ll take that chance. And of course, the presence of a god makes the city a sacred place, which is what I’ve always thought, anyway. Look at it, just look at it. How could it not be?” –from the introduction to Sacred City, a film by Barry Andrews

Yes, I’ve reviewed the CD before, which is lovely in its own right, but the film it was originally intended to accompany is STUNNING (that is, if you like art films).

Facts & Fallacies About Urban Spirituality

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FALLACY: Urban spirituality is about hating the wilderness and / or rural lands.

FACT: Urban spirituality is simply lacking a spiritual connection to the rustic lands. We acknowledge that the rural lands are necessary, and we acknowledge a dependency on them for survival, but the celebration of said is kept to a minimum, and is never a lifelong focus of the urban spiritualist.

FALLACY: Even people with a deep spiritual connection to cities must get out in the woods every so often for their physical and spiritual well-being!

FACT: That really depends on the person. Some do, others do not. People with allergies to pollens tend to avoid rural and wooded lands as a precautionary measure for their physical well-being — and sometimes, all the antihistamine in the world can’t prevent an allergic reaction, sometimes one even has an allergy to allergy meds. While one cannot deny the higher concentration of pollutants in urban areas, recent studies now suggest that the biggest contributor to both urban congestion and local pollution is actually people commuting from the suburbs. In large metropolitan cities, a proportionately very high percentage of people use public transportation as their primary mode of travel, when compared to that percentage in smaller towns (which seldom even have decent, if any public transportation), a majority of cars on the streets of Chicago at any one time are most likely to belong to people from the suburbs who’d rather ferry themselves in inside their little status-symbol-on-wheels rather than taking the Metra in from Aurora. If you want to reduce pollution, become a farmer who ventures out to the city a few times a month, or move to the city and get a transit pass.

As for spiritual well-being, a lot of urban spiritualists actually experience a spiritual unbalance in rural lands. Sometimes, this unbalance can be settled by merely entering a city.

FALLACY: Ancient cities were NOT “urban” by modern standards! Ancient cities were far more connected to the green lands around them!

FACT: The above statement could not be any more false. Ancient cities were typically loud, smelly, polluted, cramped, and hotbeds of criminal activity. Sound familiar? Heck, I just described 1960s Detroit. Sure, the technology wasn’t to the point it’s at today, so the ancient concept of industrialisation sure was different, but that’s the only real difference.

Furthermore, the idea that ancient cities were somehow so much more connected to the rural lands, if only for a source of food, might make sense in print at first, but if you really dig into the history, you’ll discover it’s also false. Food shortages in Rome were relatively common compared to food shortages in even major cities just prior the Industrial Revolution. It was a common tactic of war for one city to cut off trade routes to the city they were battling with, specifically to cause a food shortage for civilians and manipulate the politics to their favour. If there was even some deep physical connection between the cities and the farmlands back then, then how was it so relatively easy to cause famine in the cities? To say things like the above statement is simply nothing more than romantic notions about the relative spiritual “purity” of ancient people compared those of us in the modern age based on false ideas and pure ignorance of ancient realities.

Yes, there is a clear emotional disconnect between the average Amerikan city and its source of food —your typical Amerikan store-bought meats are faceless, limbless, and clothed in styrofoam and clingfilm, but the shelf life of meats being what they are, I can guarantee you that not a single major U$ city is more than a couple hours drive (tops) from a slaughterhouse, and even New York City still has an operable meat-packing district. The biggest physical disconnect that modern people have from their food source is basically all the cheap imported grains and produce, which have longer shelf-lives, especially if it’s things that can be packed in tins and airtight jars, dried, or otherwise preserved for longer shelf-life.

That said, the average middle class Greek or Roman had at least one slave doing their shopping —at ancient Rome’s peak, it’s said that there were more slaves than freepersons within the city limits— so there was still a clear physical disconnect between one and one’s food —if one was free, and even if not, there was a political disconnect. And even the ancient urban freeperson working-class still tended to pay some-one else to do the dirty work of slaughtering and feathering chickens, tilling and harvesting beans and barley, and so on.

If you break down the basics of ancient versus modern realities, is there really miles of disconnect between the city and the countryside now, in comparison to then, or is it more like only a few steps? And how important are those steps, really? I’d wager if the average rural pagan truly believed those steps were all that important, there would be far more pagan homesteaders than there currently are now —and even then I’d still wager that some would be (and are!) urban spiritual.

FALLACY: There is no historic or mythological basis for urban spirituality. Everybody knows that!

FACT: Wrong! Fortunately, I don’t see or hear this one all that much, because even the most cursory skimming of any relevant text will show that there are, indeed, deities and spirits that the ancients believed were connected to their cities, there were religious festivals that were connected to the cities, and even Pan, the most rustic of the rustic gods, was believed to inhabit the alleyways of ancient Athens.

FALLACY: There’s no such thing as urban paganism! LOL! Everybody knows that “pagan” means “nature religions”!

FACT: First off, I get this more often than some people are likely to believe —both explicitly and implicitly. The fact of the matter is, anthropologists tend to refer to any pre-Christian and / or polytheistic or animistic religion as “pagan” —including the religions practised in large, nay metropolitan ancient Mediterranean cities including Athens, Alexandria, and Rome, so clearly from an anthropological sense, there is such a thing as “urban paganism”. Furthermore, there is even “urban paganism” in a modern sense, though it is a very small niche market of pagan publishing. I only know of THREE “general neo-poagan” books ever published that relate specifically to urban spirituality and practise: The Urban Pagan: Magical Living in a 9-to-5 World by Patricia Telesco, City Magick: Spells, Rituals, and Symbols for the Urban Witch by Christopher Penczak, and The Urban Primitive: Paganism in the Concrete Jungle by Raven Kaldera & Tannin Schwartzstein; the first of these is out-of-print, the last of these is so heavily steeped with an unapolgetic bias toward rural spirituality that I cannot, in good consciousness, recommend it because it celebrates many of the false beliefs illustrated above (and not to mention many others unrelated specifically to urban spirituality). I haven’t yet read City Magick, now in its second edition, but I hope it’s at least slightly better than Urban Primitive, with regards to its portrayal of urban spirituality —even if the rest of it is, as the sole one-star reviewer on Amazon states, “New Age pot-pourri rubbish”. It’s also been so long since I’ve read Telesco’s book, and I lack my own copy for reference, that I simply cannot give it a fair assessment —though, for what it’s worth, I remember it being somewhat better than Kaldera and Schwartzstein’s implicitly impugning portrayal of urban spirituality. Compare this to the literally dozens and dozens of books about “pagan gardening” and “finding the divine in the woods” and how much even the most ostensibly generalised neo-pagan manuals will dedicate to hailing the rustic and woodland divine to the point of practically ignoring the divine urban.

FALLACY: There is no need for urban spiritualists to feel so left out —the pagan community is very open-minded and welcoming to ALL!

FACT: The reasons for the urban spiritual market being so small and still so biased toward rustic spirituality are clear to any pagan or polytheist with a sense of history and a well-rounded lived reality: The neo-pagan movement really hasn’t moved past its initial 19th Century Romanticism that disproportionately celebrates the countryside and “getting back to nature”. As such, there is very much a self-enforced standard in the modern neo-pagan community of “city = BAD!!!! >:-( country = Good! :-) ” —and nearly every pagan / polytheist I’ve personally met, self included, who has dared to proudly declare their lived reality of completely lacking any spiritual connection to the rustic lands has voiced being blamed for all manner of societal ills that really have nothing to do with urban life (including things that even rural people are no strangers to, like racism or sexism and war), being told one’s spirituality realities are false, and sometimes simply being clearly actively ostracised from the local community (sometimes in kinder ways than in others). While many pagans insist that they’re open-minded when the reality is that there is really very little open-mindedness when it comes to urban spirituality. While many pagans may have a justifiable complaint that too many outside the pagan and polytheist community assume we’re all barefoot hippies dancing in the woods, there is precious little done to combat that self-perpetuating stereotype: Just go to pretty much any pagan Internet forum, and the header image is more likely to be some kind of wooded glen or “green and fertile valley” than it is to be some benign and unassuming symbol (though these are often-enough incorporated into the image). Go to any given pagan or polytheist blog, and you’re very likely to see something similar.

If those who most-easily fill a spiritual void in an urban place rather than in the countryside feel like there’s little to no place for them in the pagan community, then what reasoning is there to assume that this is a baseless assumption rather than an expression of one’s own lived reality? It’s not like there’s a shortage of good and excellent guides to pagan camping in favour of pages about “pagan couch-surfing” or “pagan squatting”. It’s not like the celebrated image of the pagan community is a priest at the immense library of the metropolitan ancient Alexandria, or Diogenes living on the streets of Athens rather than a kindly-eyed witch in a cottage in the woods, or a stag-horned God in repose in a shaded part of the forest. It’s not like the worldwide community of self-identified pagans has done much, if anything meaningful to broaden its image from “nature-worshipping neo-romanticists” to “all manner of pre-Christian polytheism from erudite urban spirituality to nature-sensitive rustic worshippers”.

Why “Queer”, but not “Pagan”?

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I love etymology, and this leads me to often thinking of the words I use very carefully before using them. I don’t call heterosexual “straight” by default, because “straight” in this use does not simply mean heterosexual: It means “normal”, “not a criminal”, “sober”, and it evolved from criminal and drug subcultures. As homosexuality is no longer criminalised in the First World, to call heterosexuals “straight” is to reinforce homophobia, I dare say it is even an act of homophobia.

…but I digress.

First off, while I dislike the term “pagan” based on a loaded etymology, and I absolutely do not feel like it is the best word to describe my religion, I do occasionally resign to it out of convenience and knowing full well that even though it may be one of those instances where it’s simply easier than going on a long discussion I don’t want to be in (or I would have made that discussion happen and not said “I’m pagan”), I do so with the knowledge that I’m inviting in all of these assumptions people are going to make about me that are, by and large, not an accurate way to describe me or my religion at all.

While there is certainly a reinforcing etymology to these assumptions of others’, the major reason for these assumptions is the self-reinforcing stereotyping that runs rampant in the community of self-identified pagans. The fact of the matter is, the “mainstream” idea that pagans are nature-worshipping hippies dancing barefoot in the woods is because an overwhelming majority of self-identified pagans fit that description, and tend to be a bit less-than-accepting of anybody under the “pagan umbrella” who doesn’t fit that description. This is the primary reason for such a rift between the pagan community and polytheists of the recon method: A majority of “recons” are urban or at least non-rural in that they neither naturally feel nor feel any desire to need an especial spiritual connection with the rustic or even wild lands to properly practise their religion, whose who may identify as urban tend to have an especially spiritual connection to cities. A lot of “recons” are centrist, conservative, or are urban liberals who recognise that sustainable living is that of either the farm or the metropolis, the suburbs where many self-identified “pagans” actually live being an abomination.

I definitely see an emerging “post-reconstructionism” movement in the polytheist community, wherein people realise that the reconstructionist method, when applied strictly, can be limiting and allow for little (if anything) in the way of spirituality in tune with modern realities, but that does not necessarily mean that the community of self-identified “pagans” is necessarily going to be the best place for such people, especially those of us who neither have nor want nor need to have a deep spiritual void filled with the kind of minor (or major) woo that can only be found tilling the land of a homestead farm or deep in the woods and miles from civilisation.

Personally? I’ve had times where I’ve tried to get that, but I’m physically, emotionally, and spiritually allergic to the woods. One cannot make that connection happen if it’s not meant to, no matter how much one tries, no matter how much one has to fill oneself with antihistamine just to be clear-headed enough to not only be perceptive of that connection, if it’s to come, but make sure it’s meaningful. I mean, who knows? For all I know, maybe all that Zyrtec and Zatador drops and nasal sprays and various creams block that connection —but if being without all that antihistamine makes it hard to breathe in a rural place, then maybe I’m just not meant to have that sort of connection to nature? Maybe I really am better off without it, and the Theoi are just fine with that?

…but some-one recently asked me why I liberally self-aply the term “Queer”, but not pagan —after all, these two words both have virtually the same histories! Well, except that they don’t.

No, really. They don’t.

The word “queer” comes from German (versus “paganus” coming from Latin), meaning “oblique, off-centre” and has a possible relation to “quer”, meaning “odd”. The first recorded use of “queer” relating to homosexuality only dates to 1922 after the word “queer” was introduced to English around 1500, when “paganus” was first adopted as a slur against non-Christians during the Holy Roman empire!

Then there’s the fact that, based on etymology alone, I’m very Queer. Even amongst the subcultures I’ve found myself at home in, I’ve never epitomised any of them: Too dark for most Mods, too polished and classic for most Goths, too erudite for most punks, and too modern and urban for the overwhelming majority of pagans and polytheists. Even as a gay man, well, I’m of TS history, which makes me the sort of potential sexual partner many other gay men want nothing to do with. As a man of TS hostory, I’m enough of an effete that most of them will still call me “ma’am”, even after told that’s inappropriate. How any of this makes me unstrange, unqueer, seems rather, well, queer to me. If any-one has a right to re-claim “queer” from a status of slur (and a relatively new one —the term was rather benign prior to it’s GBLT associations), I think I can objectively say that I sure as hell do.

On the other hand, what right do I have to “pagan”? If this is a term that evolved from the Latin equivalent of “redneck” or “hillbilly” and now possesses a baggage that includes a highly implict and (very easily argued) enforced community meaning of “nature-worshipping”, then no, it doesn’t fit me in the slightest. A Google Image search for “pagan” or a perusal of Wikipedia’s article on Neopaganism and its contemporary photos reveals how deeply “nature religion” is synonymous with the contemporary pagan community, to the point that “urban paganism” is such a tiny niche market that only three books have ever been published on the suvject —one currently out-of-print (Patricia Telesco’s The Urban Pagan), and one is so lousy with a strong and unapologetic rural bias that, as I know my own spiritual realities, it’s riddled with fallacious misinformation (pretty much the entire Introduction to R. Kaldera & T. Schwartzstein’s The Urban Primitive is a biased screed hailing the woodlands and damning the urban lands as a bringer of doom and ailments both physical and spiritual, though it gets a little better, it’s not by much). I don’t even think the pagan community thinks they’re being as unwelcoming and prejudiced as, in practise, they really are, but when the reality of this not merely ostensible, but blatant and celebrated bias is something that one must deal with at every venture into the “pagan community”, hoping to touch based with co-religionists, other devotees of one’s patron, and those walking an otherwise similar spiritual path, then not only is it apparent that one’s spirituality is regarded as “queer and perverse” in the pre1922 sense, but also one that’s regarded as lesser and hollow, false and silly, then yes, I think I can say that I don’t have any incentive to try and rationalise any claim to the term “pagan”, as it’s being made abundantly clear that I only barely qualify —like the cisgender gay man who likes to make it perfectly clear that he’s normal, and not one of those icky fem gays or trannies, that he was in a fraternity in uni and captain of the gridiron team, and his name is Cleancut McNormaldude and just happens to be somehow “queer”. R~i~g~h~t…..

In fact, I roll my eyes at Cleancut McNormaldude attempting to claim he’s “queer” rather than “gay“, if not “homosexual” or “bisexual” are words he feels suit him, because that’s not a word that gives any accurate nuances that describe him outside of only one of the implied meanings, at best, that he’s practically watered-down the meaning of “queer” to strip it of all nuance and render it nothing more than a meaningless synonym.

When one truly loves vocabulary, it becomes apparent that even words that seem synonymous have these nuances that make their meanings truly different, even if in seemingly minor ways. These numances are important, as any Paganism & Witchcraft 101 book worth the paper they’re printed on have said before me. To say “crone” when “hag” is best can render a ritual or spell useless or change it completely, so why call myself “pagan” when it carries with it not only an etymology but a common, every-day use that implies so many things that I am not and only one thing that I am (polytheist, practising a pre-Christian religion)? Why should I not use Queer when it can easily cover all sorts of nuances about my personality and character in addition to my sexual predilections?

If you’re going to say anything at all, say it the best way that you can.

30 Day Paganism Meme: Day 24 ~ Personal aesthetics and Hellenismos

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How do I answer this?

Personally, I can’t think of any sort of aesthetics that would be prohibited by any sort of traditional polytheism. Hell, one of my friends is a Hindu and has been gravitating toward the Horrorcore scene, and while I think most of the fans of that scene look like they just rolled out of bed, you know, I can’t think of anything from what I know of Hindu religions, much less Hellenic polytheistic religions, that would outright prohibit dressing like an evil clown and spraying your friends with soda.

Granted, that’s not to say that it’s all “anything goes”, especially when one is of especial cultus to gods whose domain includes aesthetic arts. I generally put time and effort into my own appearance — even my “wearing rags to do yard work” look isn’t complete until I’ve taken a light shower, washed my face (including toner and moisturiser), lip balm, sunblock, my hair tied back, and a handkerchief to dab (never wipe) sweat — and expect any-one practising a traditional Hellenic polytheism, and so generally understanding of ancient Hellenic ideals, to do so, as well. I don’t expect such others to dress in any of the same ways I do, but I do expect to notice at least some minimum amount of effort toward an intentional appearance, at least most of the time. That appearance can be “soccer mom” or “misanthropic quasi-goth” or anything outside or in-between.

I’ve always been an aesthete and quite a dandy. As a little kid, I delighted in getting “dressed up” and would think of any excuse to do so. When I switched to a state junior high and high school, I became one of those kids who went nuts now that I didn’t have to wear a school uniform, in spite of the efforts of nearly every adult in my life at the time begging with me to knock it off with the flamboyance — apparently, I’d have “plenty of time” to look like Marc Bolan after I became an adult.

While I’m hard pressed to instantaneously recognise any explicit relationship between my Mod dandyism and Hellenismos, if I think about it just a little, it really all makes perfect sense:

*Beau Brummel, often regarded as the archetypical dandy, caused a sensation when he abandoned the powdered wig (long before a tax on the powder caused it to fall out of fashion) and decided to wear his natural hair cut “à la Brutus” — calling to mind images of ancient Rome.
*Lord Byron fought for Greek independence
*Oscar Wilde praised the ancient Hellenes on all levels.
*Colin MacInnes’ novel Absolute Beginners, long-influential in the Mod subculture includes a supporting character referred to only as “The Fabulous Hoplite” and described as have a “Caesarian” haircut, which remains somewhat popular in Mod circles.

The Hellenic influence on Dandy subcultures has always existed, and though the clothing often associated is a far cry with the reality of ancient painted stoneworks, it’s easily reasoned that the “fabulous simplicity” of the now-white statuary and columned temples was an influence on the lines and daring use of solid colours from Beau Brummel to Oscar Wilde to Pete Meaden.

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