Gay Spirituality

I mentioned earlier that designing ritual for events like Between the Worlds can be challenging because while the majority of the participants are neo-pagan, they are not all wiccan.  There are a number of neo-pagan paths that do not use the ritual framework of calling the quarters and invoking the God and Goddess made popular by Wicca.   Facilitating rituals for these types of mixed populations can be difficult.  I’ve found that as a queer spiritual pracitioner, it makes sense to create a new framework for these types of events.

One part of these new framework that I’ve discovered works well is to replace calling the quarters with something that doesn’t have a particular set meaning in an existing tradition but that all attendees can relate to as queer people.  I’ve found that invoking the 6 colors of the rainbow flag makes for an interesting ritual that queer people can easily relate to while remaining agnostic towards any particular pagan path.  I invoke the colors and the energies typically associated with those colors.  The correspondences I use are:

• RED - Passion, power, strength
• ORANGE - Creativity & sexuality
• YELLOW - Personal Power & Responsibility
• GREEN - Love, the Heart, Compassion
• BLUE - Communication, truth, willingness to speak up
• PURPLE - Manifestation, imagination, activism for change

Where I’ve used this invocation in place of the quarters I’ve found that the resulting ritual was uniquely a queer spiritual ritual and didn’t strongly draw on imagery from any one path.  As a result, the attendees where less focuses on how their spiritual practices differ and more focused on their commonality as spiritual queer people.  I hope it works for you as well.

Science Daily reported on a new study that suggests incense smoke may increase the risk of some upper respiratory cancers.  From the article:

Researchers have shown that burning incense—which is made of plant materials mixed with oils—produces a mixture of possible carcinogens, including polyaromatic hydrocarbons, carbonyls and benzene. Because incense smoke is inhaled, a number of studies have looked at the possible link between incense burning and lung cancer, but results have been inconsistent.

This study, recognizing the common use of incense in Asian culture, followed over 61,000 Singapore Chinese for about 5 years.  The researchers interviewed study participants about diet, lifestyle and other factors.  They discovered that those who were frequently exposed to incense smoke were at an increase risk of a certain type of upper respiratory cancer. 

The study authors concluded that this study suggests that more research is needed to see what levels of exposure lead to increased risk and which types of incense carry the lowest risk.  The study authors also noted that incense use is common outside of Asia including India and parts of the West. 

As a pagan, I use incense regularly in my rites and rituals.  This study certainly raises some concerns about how much incense I use and how frequently. I find it interesting that this correlation hasn’t been made before say among Catholics, another religion where incense is heavily used.   

While I doubt that a single study will prevent me from using incense in my rituals, as a priest I think it will make me more aware of objections to incense that others may have when I facilitate public rituals. 

I talk a lot about the “Queer Spirit”.  In fact, I’ve even given workshops on it.  Our group, the Green Faerie Grove, uses this idea frequently in ritual.  I thought I’d take a moment to talk a bit about the Queer Spirit as I see it and why I think it’s a useful construct to use in ritual.

I view the Queer Spirit as a type of non-polar, genderless divine spirit.  For those of you that are familiar with Scott Cunningham’s book Wicca for the Solitary Pracitioner, I’d compare the Queer Spirit in my view to what Cunningham calls the “All” or “One”.  In Cunningham’s work, he talks about the All being a genderless, formless divine energy that in an attempt to understand itself better divided into the male and female polarities that many see as God and Goddess.  This isn’t a new idea as Kabbalah talks about the Ain Soph, a divine void or nothingness that condenses down to a genderless, divine energy in the first Sephorith, Kether.  Kether then divides into the masculine Chokmah and feminine Binah.  The idea here being that the Queer Spirit precedes gender and identity as God or Goddess.  It’s a formless, genderless divinity and a collective divine consciousness.

In my personal practice, the Queer Spirit is the source for everything positive and everything negative about being Queer.  It’s a primal source.  It’s also a repository to which we return upon our passing.  Our community is never diminished when we lose a brother or sister because their spiritual essence rejoins the Queer Spirit, which like the Force in Star Wars flows between and amongst us all. 

So as a pagan or Wiccan, why bother with this distinction?  Afterall, can’t we just workshop queer gods and goddesses?  I think we can.  However, one thing that the Queer Spirit as an idea provides is a common divine energy to which various pagan paths can relate.  At Between the Worlds, we have heathens, buddhists, druids and every other type of alternative pagan path represented.  Invoking God and Goddess and the four quarters in our opening ritual has a tendency to alienate those paths that don’t see the world from a Wicca perspective.  By invoking the Queer Spirit as our primary source of divinity, we allow each participant to bring their own meaning to it.  Each person can view the Queer Spirit as they will and better relate to the ritual as a whole.

I’ve found that this notion of the Queer Spirit has gone from something used primarily to unite various pagan paths in a diverse setting like Between the Worlds to an extremely integral part of my own practice.  I hope that you find some inspiration from it as well. 

Today the Washington Post reported that lesbian activist Del Martin died at age 87.  In the eclectic tradition we practice in the Green Faerie Grove, we believe that the spirit of queer people that have come before us live on as our “queer ancestors”.  Their collective consciousness makes up a construct we worship and invoke as the Queer Spirit.   Today, we remember Del Martin and welcome her among the ancestors. 

Del and her long time partner, Phyllis Lyon, were married in June of this year following the ruling by the California Supreme Court that allowed same-sex couples to marry in that state.  Their marriage was a triumph on many levels.  It was a victory of their long time love over the inequality and discrimination experienced by gay men and lesbians across America.  It was also the end of their own brave struggle to bring equality to all.  Del Martin and her partner had been involved in the fight for equal marriage rights for some time.  They were plaintiffs in the lawsuit that reached the California Supreme Court and finally cleared the way for gays to marry in that state.

In 1955, with several other women, Del and her partner formed a social club for lesbians, which eventually became the nation’s first lesbian advocacy group.  She was also the first lesbian to serve on the board of the National Organization for Women. 
I wish Del well in her journey into the next life and when I next raise my hands in invocation to the Queer Spirit, I know that Del Martin is now among our queer ancestors.  May her strength and courage live on and bless us all.