From: altheimm@nextnet.csus.edu (Murray Altheim)
Subject: Re: New pagans and reading
Organization: California State University Sacramento
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 01:09:36 GMT

(Chuck Bigham) writes:
>(Tammy Stark Blandino) writes:
>
>[Other suggestions for reading list deleted]
>>Starhawk
>>Spiral Dance
>
>When I first started reading alt.pagan, _Spiral Dance_ was the big winner
>in the list of "must read" books. However, after I finished it, I came
>away with a bad taste in my mouth about what paganism was all about. It
>seemed to me that Starhawk was replacing The Big Guy With A Beard with
>The Big Gal In White.
>
>I realize Starhawk follows a Dianic Wiccan tradition that emphasizes the
>Goddess. I'm male though, and found getting in touch with "the female
>within" at the expense of "the male within" distastful. One of the
>attractions of paganism for me is the emphasis on duality, on the male
>and female aspects of diety, and it seemed to me Starhawk's emphasis on
>the female were just as bad as Christianity's emphasis on the male.
>
>Chuck

Chuck, I recognize a little of my searching in yours. As Janis mentioned
recently regarding her reading habits, when I dig my face into a book I
come up for air after awhile with ink smudges. I went through a period of
reading a great deal of both the traditional pagan and neo-pagan sources
(though I hardly call myself an "expert") but found a lack of balance in
both my reading and my group experience. Being male, I found the female
aspect of the "Wiccan" experience very powerful and attractive, but there
was a side of me (or more properly a part of me) that wasn't feeling
fulfilled. And this is not to say that there aren't Wiccan or other pagan
groups that provide more of a male-female balance, just in my experience
it wasn't happening.

Last spring I started hanging out with some Hellenic (Greek) pagans, an
ostensibly men's group (although the group is split almost 50-50 with 
women).  I suppose given its origins as a men's group I shouldn't criticize
the imbalance and IMHO inherent sexism, but it seem to me that a balance is
what is needed. In a single-gender group, an orientation to a single gender
is more understandable, but I seem to have run from one extreme to another.
You might gather that I'm looking for a more balanced group. I suppose I am.

This brings up another point that I think is even more important. You can do
as much reading as you like, but the experience you gain either as a solo or
in a group will provide more than ten books. One of Ciaran's posts of about 
a month ago talked about a harvest ritual with an attendance of about 400 
people that sounded like a truly transcendant experience. I envy her and her
involvement in what appears to be a very healthy pagan community. 

From my personal experience, all I can say is

     Hanging out of a swaying birch 
     Twenty feet above the ground in a high wind
     White linen shirt open and flapping wildly

     The sound of flute and drum
     Echoing from off the riverbank 
     Feeling a wild energy as I rode the breeze
     The presence of more than just me and a tree.

(Not much of a poem, but I tried writing it as prose and <nothing> happened)
Anyway, my first experience of Pan (or at least what I attribute to him) 
means as much in terms of understanding as anything I ever gained through a
book. Not necessarily better, but different. In some ways better, as I'm 
sure not the first to state that experience is the best teacher. It's 
unfortunate we all can't experience as easily as we can read.

Blessings,

The Somewhat Less Melancholy Murray (thanks all! :P)

-- 
Murray M. Altheim      "Ils ont l'orteil de Bouc, & d'un Chevreil l'oreille,
Instructional Consultant    La corne d'un Chamois, & la face vermeille
CSU, Sacramento          Comme un rouge Croissant: & dancent toute nuict
altheimm@csus.edu       Dedans un carrefour, ou pres d'une eau qui bruict."