On "Pagan" and why I'm eschewing the label
First, a self-righteous and epically-scaled pronouncement...
This year, the Ninth District Court in California ruled that the inclusion of the words “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance rendered the document unconstitutional as a recognized Federal government. Pagan reaction was surprisingly mixed, and perhaps it’s because the mainstream pagan position on the importance of linguistic accuracy is waning. After all, the pagan mainstream has become one in which “Earth centered” has insinuated itself solidly within the definition of “pagan.” The parallels are ominous: While 99 Senators, the “President,” and nearly every other politician who could get the media’s attention were declaring non-monotheists to be less-patriotic-than-we, the majority of the Goddess-worshipping, Earth-centered pagans continued to wonder why pagans who don’t worship the Earth or the Goddess are feeling snubbed.
That said, this may be the last time I address this issue in any sort of a formal way. I hope so, I really do, because the fence I’m sitting on is really starting to hurt my butt.
On the one hand, I want to be a purist. The word “pagan” means, “not Jewish, Christian, or Muslim.” That’s the definition I grew up with, along with a deprecatory one that means “hedonistic heathen.” I’m a pagan because I’m not one of those three religions.
On the other hand, I accept the argument that language changes, and that words mean what the majority of people say they mean. I don’t even mind when people say things like, “My paganism means…” followed by Goddess-worship and Earth-worship. If 10000 people are polled, and 9000 disagree with me, well, that's that.
I can speak in as grand terms as I want, but it really all comes down to this: If I accept the definition of paganism espoused by the growing majority of people who voice an opinion on the matter, then I’m not pagan. The identity that I’ve embraced for nigh on a decade does not belong to me. Ironically enough, the loudest voices who say, “Pagan means Earth-centered Goddess worship,” also say, “Everyone is entitled to define their own religious identities.” It’s a contradiction:
Me: “Why does ‘pagan’ mean ‘Earth-centered Goddess worship’?”
Them: “Because that’s how pagans define it.”
Me: “Well, I’m a pagan, and I don’t identify it that way.”
Them: “Oh, stop being so belligerent and play along as we strip your identity
from you!”
It’s all about identity, and that’s a knife that cuts both ways. I don’t have much interest in Wiccan-style religious practice right now, but it’s a very popular alternative choice right now. It’s more useful to have a label that identifies a somewhat cohesive community – such as “kinda sorta not quite Wiccan” – than to have a label that just means “not like them.” The traditional definition of “pagan” is useless as a community label… it’s hard enough demonstrating to Recons that they all have some sort of common ground; throw in everyone else who, by the traditional definition, is “pagan,” and you’ve got an incoherent mass.
I’ll even accept that part of the friction is my own fault. My reaction in the past has been to cast the label “Wiccan” upon those folks, when they’re quite right in rejecting that label. Meanwhile, British Traditional Witches have begun abandoning the word “Wicca” for similar reasons to my abandoning “pagan”: A mix of elitism – not wanting to be affiliated with them – and a feeling of being cast out of their own identities. In the past year, I’ve even considered calling myself a Satanist just so I’d have a label the Llewellynites didn’t want to take over.
I don’t know what to call myself now. I can’t use “heathen,” because the Norse and Germanic sorts have claimed that word (and nobody wanted it at the time). “Polytheist” is an option, as is “Pomo.” There’s even something to be said for “hedonist.”
There’s also the issue of what Christian and Jewish acquaintances call me. I have enough friends who are willing to go along with my definition of “pagan” that I don’t want to present all the self-identifying pagans as petty twits, or myself as an elitist who’s too good to be call “pagan.”
Then again, there’s a small part of my brain that points out that, historically, “pagan” had the emotive force of two other words with “g” in the middle: “Nigger” and “faggot.” Do I really want to be associated with words like that? I’m bisexual – Do I really want to prance around telling everyone I’m a faggot? Sure, it’s fun for shock value for a little while, but in the long run, it does more harm than good.
And that argument is a good one to use with acquaintances if I don’t want to explain about how I don’t identify as pagan because the Earth-worshipping Goddess-sorts have wrested the meaning from the word.
For now, I’ll continue to wean myself in the direction I was already going: If people want to call me pagan, I’ll generally accept it, but I won’t identify that way myself. The word has lost its appeal for me. It’s too generic, too incendiary, too banal. It’s just a word, after all… once upon a time, it was my identity, but that time, I think, is gone.
I wish it were the case that an essay like this would completely purge my system of the bitterness associated with this long-standing feud, but I don’t think it will. I’ll still snit about it from time to time, I’m sure. But this rant is tiring already, after only two pages – there was a time when my vitriol alone would spew out five or six. So I’m getting there.
-- Brighn, Hedonist for Hire (9/9/02)