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I Felt Ashamed At Pagan Pride

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The circle.

The circle is fundamental.

This simple shape, along with the square and the triangle, introduces our early minds to geometry, to symmetry, to physical and social design.

This past weekend I felt ashamed at Pagan Pride on account of a circle.

Photo by Katie Walker, Flickr

My body helped form the edge of a circle. My body stood next to other bodies — thirty perhaps — in the middle of one of the most public of spaces in all of Denver, Civic Center Park. This circle of bodies in the middle of my city, in the middle of a crowd of onlookers, did something I did not expect this circle to do.

It created an us and a them.

Casting circle before a crowd of people, some of whom were unsuspecting passers-by, and others virtually residents of the park, established a kind of religious exclusivity. It was as though we said, by joining hands and turning our backs to the crowd:

This is our circle. You are on the outside of this circle. We are doing our religious work on the inside.

The circle seemed to other the onlookers.

None of this was done explicitly. The leaders of the ritual, all good-hearted Pagans, did not inform the crowd that they were to remain outside, or that they were unwelcome in the ritual. They didn’t need to.

They’d invited us to come down for ritual, but the non-Pagans were not addressed. There was no clear explanation of what the ritual would be like, what might be expected of the participants, or — for those who weren’t familiar with Pagan (or more specifically, Wiccan/New Age-ish) rituals — what it would all mean.

The insiders were told that the ritual was going to raise power to bring us protection. The irony would be that this circle inspired the same antagonism and meanness from outside the circle from which the ritual was seeking to protect us.

There was heckling. It sounded like drunk heckling. Drunk, Christian heckling. And there were disruptions from a few men who, while we stood there in our circle, paced slowly around the perimeter. One asked for a cigarette. One stood outside the circle by about 5 feet and folded his arms across his chest.

The ritual leaders did not acknowledge any of this.

In response to the jeers and taunts, one ritual leader stood in solidarity inside the circle and began to talk to us about how protection was so important because there were people out there who didn’t understand us or respect us. It was as close to a “preaching” moment as you might find inside this kind of circle.

I heard her reassure us, and I thought,

But we just created an out there by casting this circle. We closed them off from us, shut them out, but only symbolically because they could see and hear all of what we were doing. Play it like we’re the victims, but we just created — through ritual — the same kind of alienation that we feel in relation to the greater society.

We just became The Church.

Photo by Mugley, Flickr

The rest of the ritual involved the distribution of smooth stones to each of us, stones which had been blessed and inscribed with a pentacle and the word, “protection.” These were our charms, we were told, to give us strength and to provide us protection as we leave the circle and go back into the world.

I found myself feeling so embarrassed. I kept looking down. I didn’t want protection from the people on the outside of the circle; I wanted to connect with them. To explain. To try to find some sort of understanding.

But it wasn’t my ritual.

To close, we imagined a ball of white light — the quintessential ball of white light — enveloping the circle, and then extending outward to include all of this place and all of the world. This imaginary light would attempt to do what we had not done with our physical bodies, which was to include all. In that moment our meditation, our magickal working, was an obvious self-deception; a willful ignorance of what was actually occurring in the space around us.

At least, that’s how it felt from where I was standing in the circle.

I don’t know about circles anymore. I don’t know if they’re appropriate to cast in these kinds of public settings. I doubt them in a way that I didn’t before Denver’s 2012 Pagan Pride.

I trust that many of you either cast circles, or have been in a ritual where one was cast. I wonder if you could shed some light on how you see them as useful, or how you find them to be problematic. Could you imagine other forms of ritual, ones that do not create a boundary between those on the outside and those within, that would feel appropriate at a Pagan gathering? Or, is this kind of “protective barrier” a necessity?

I felt ashamed at Pagan Pride because I was a part of something that felt, on account of the circle, incredibly exclusive. Could there be a more inclusive, perhaps even radically inclusive way of doing Pagan ritual in public?

Curses, Shame, and a High-Functioning Mexican

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I watched her shovel the snow in fits and starts with a 3-year-old boy trailing behind, and I felt sorry for her. She was at home during most days with the little one, while her husband, I presumed, was out at work. I never saw him shovel. Rarely did I see him at all, to be honest.

I spent most of the morning laying out salt, waiting, then clearing our modest driveway and sidewalk. The snowfall took little pauses here and there, but it never completely stopped. We saw three feet come down in no time at all.

“Wanna finish mine?” she called out from across the street.

I smiled, neighbor-like.

“Maybe your beau could stop on the way home and pick up some salt. It really helps to break up the ice.”

She smiled.

“Oh, he’s inside. Works from home. Don’t have to leave for work when you work on a laptop.”

What a jerk, I though, sitting inside at his computer while his wife is trying to clear off a sky-load of snow while simultaneously calming an irritated child.

“Well, I can pick you up some salt if I’m out by the hardware store,” I offered.

“Only if convenient,” she said politely.

She carried on for a few more minutes, digging out a single path from the front door to the buried car. By then, her son was in full tantrum-mode, so she picked him up and went inside.

Once I cleared an escape route for our car, my husband and I set off to the store to pick up a few snowed-in essentials. I couldn’t let go of this situation. I was so angry at her work-at-home husband. I though he was negligent, and mean. I started to concoct this story about their imbalanced, destined-to-fail relationship. I was on a roll, and I didn’t let go of it for the entire drive.

“You should curse him,” my husband joked.

“I just want to shame him,” I said.

“Same thing.”

When we returned home, I picked up our well-used, metal shovel and walked across the street. The sun had set by then, but the radiant light from a mini-mountain range of lawns and cars roofs provided plenty enough light to see.

I’d decided — not out of neighborly kindness, but out of spite — to do this man’s work. Compassion was not my motivation; I was fueled by a passive-aggressive vengeance. I wanted to stick it to him. And it wasn’t without justification, I believed. There were many, horrible things that could have befallen this family had the snow been left on the ground.

What if their son had broken his leg? What if he had an allergic reaction to some new food? How did they plan to get to the hospital when their car was completely blocked in? Had he even thought of that? What kind of father was this man?! His negligence was going to lead to other people’s injury. I was certain of it.

My internal rant continued until the driveway and sidewalk were clear. My forehead was drenched with sweat, and my wool sweater completely soaked through. I was a mess, but it was worth it.

I shoveled the snow leading up to their porch, and as I reached the last step I heard the door open. I looked up, and there she stood, baby on her hip.

Pride. Self-satisfaction. This was my moment.

“Did you do the sidewalk?” she asked, surprised.

“And the driveway,” I said, trying to sound somewhat matter-of-fact about it. “You never know when you’re going to need to get your car out. There could be an emergency, or something.”

She pointed inside. “He’s going to have a liquor store emergency pretty soon.” She smirked.

Well that wasn’t at all what I was thinking about. I tried to brush it off.

Then, she said the words that threw everything into a tailspin.

“I was just going to wait for a high-functioning Mexican to come by tomorrow and do it. That’s what usually happens.”

A high-functioning Mexican? A…high…functioning…Mexican?

My mind went blank. I couldn’t believe what I’d heard. I was speechless.

I stood in the cold; shocked and sweaty. She offered to bake me muffins for my trouble, and I muttered that she didn’t have to do that. I couldn’t stomach the thought. Then, she said a polite “goodbye” and went inside.

She wasn’t helpless; that was just “gender stereotyping” on my part. And he wasn’t a tyrant. They were just a young, married couple with a driveway full of white privilege, and they were waiting for someone else to come take care of it for them.

Turns out, that someone else was me.

I felt stupid, and ashamed of myself. I’d done all of this to prove a point, but it was me who was given a lesson.

Act without compassion, and you will experience an absence of compassion. Seek to shame another, and you will experience shame. Place another man’s negligence on trial, and you will come to see how you, yourself, have been negligent.

Can you see any other lessons in this experience?