Is Techno-Pagan a Thing?

2024-01-18T21:39:28Z

During our conversation with eclecticwitches today, I was thinking about the tensions between colonialism, urbanity, and time. There was a time when most capital-P Pagans I knew seemed somewhat oblivious to the privileged and hegemonic approach they took to gathering practices and traditions, picking and choosing the parts they liked, and starting a practice without consulting the living, breathing practitioners of the present day. That time seems to have passed, fortunately, and people are a lot more thoughtful and respectful in how they find and engage traditions they did not inherit.

(A known struggle among immigrant communities is that migratory generations try to enforce their culture on their children while that culture has continued to develop and shift back home, leaving them to be strict about traditions and practices that are already changing elsewhere in the world. I see this with settler pagans who try to reassert ancestral traditions while those traditions may persist in a different form today.)

But there's still a bit of... pastoral nostalgia?... about it all that doesn't resonate for me. Everyone seems focused on trying to re-connect to the land, reconnect to the elements, reconnect to things lost or distorted by time, and I'm trying to connect to the here-and-now.

I've never lived in the countryside, I've been terminally online since adolescence, and building a coven over technology is less far-fetched to me than a woodland retreat or starlit meadow. All of the moments of my life where I felt magic around me have been socially and materially urban, so it makes sense to me to make more room in my practice for technological and postmodern sensibilities, not less.

I recall that a witch I dated about 15 years ago was perpetually losing things and had a knack for frying technology around her. It reminds me of the relationship I once had with time -- seemingly antagonistic, but really I was going against a resonant element instead of accepting it as a force of nature. I'd like to think my relationship with technology has only ever been as contentious as I forced it to be, either by not knowing myself and my vulnerabilities or by not knowing the tech and its vulnerabilities. Turns out we get along quite well when I align these in the same direction.

And I link this question with greater tensions such as being a settler in colonized lands. It is paternalistic and naïve to assume that giving land back to indigenous communities (for example, and BTW we should totally be doing this) would lead to no cities -- it would lead to different cities, or more likely a shift in the cities that already exist. Abandonment could still be toxic. Why not adapt? Aspiring toward balance instead of growth does not mean destroying what has been built, it means building less and repurposing what already exists. We cannot easily unmake urbanity, we can only redirect it in the future, learn from our mistakes, and adapt with more hope and forward-thinking, less capitalism and environmental antagonism.

According to my understanding of entropy and time-cycles, I don't think these particular eggs can be un-cracked. What is built in destruction is still built, and would be at least as destructive if we tried to break it all back down. So for me, at least some of my spiritual practice will need to be a recognition that technology only occludes our relationship with nature, the universe, the elements insofar as it has emerged in post-spiritual contexts, not that it is inherently anti-spiritual or even spirit-neutral. There's still magic there, I think, for those who are open to it.

The human mind wants some things to be perpetually true, even to the point of wanting to pause or reverse progress, despite the human nature of perpetual change. Accepting change so well that you can perceive and accept it is, to me, the heart of mindfulness and of time magic. So I will add to my long list of lofty spiritual goals to find ways to deepen my practice that work with technology, cityscapes, and urban living rather than against them.

Re: the title of this entry, if the term "techno-pagan" already exists and has meaningfully different connotations, I'll try to come up with something else. If it has not been developed at all, consider this me calling dibs.

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Cycles

2023-12-19T15:47:37Z

None of my research into hypomanias has reported highs without commensurate lows, but this is the first year I've been paying close enough attention to witness it.

Coincidentally or not, I am experiencing some intense challenges at the moment; my partner and I have both recognized that unlike my hypomanias, my hypo-depressions likely have a chicken-and-egg relationship with difficult changes.

No more than a couple of weeks ago, the atmospheric "vibe" around me shifted. I paid close attention, as if the universe was trying to tell me something. Since then, though, I notice my daily mood tracker has shifted: tense and worried, even a little anxious. It came to a head Sunday, one of the hardest days I can remember (though my memory is way more faulty when I'm depressed).

My mom told me both that she had COVID and that she had no one around to help her out (my brother and his on-again-off-again girlfriend and some number of her progeny all just moved back in, but they are out of state and no one told me). I spent most of the day gathering up-to-date info, making sure she got on Paxlovid, and fetching her prescription and vitamins. My debit card doesn't always get along with Walgreens on nights and weekends, so I had to make two trips and spend all of my cash.

Simultaneously, I was being called in by an online community I've been connecting with. I don't want to comment on the specifics just yet -- I believe there is a valid concern and am trusting the process while simultaneously finding the process opaque, slow, and discordant to my neurodivergent traits. I feel like my ego is being tested, but so far I have not wavered in putting the community's needs ahead of my own discomforts. The greater struggle, I think, is that without clarity from that community I have to look outside it for emotional support, processing, and clarification, and no one whom I've entrusted so far sees it the way I do. My partner and most of the white people I know simply aren't as far along in their anti-racist reflections as I am, and so there's a lot of people who want to stand up for me or ask me why I bother. These statements are unhelpful at best and further isolating at worst. (That isn't to say my partner hasn't been tremendously supportive in other ways -- she's really shown up for me the past 24 hours in particular -- just that I have to be careful about bogging her Aries mind down with specific that she, in her infinite runner-ness, wouldn't fuck with.) I need spaces like this because I frequently practice alone and it's been a great platform to build something socially, but there's not been an opportunity for me to unpack what I've signed up for vs. what is being foist upon me (and I allow for the possibility that it is all the former in ways I have yet to comprehend). But I need spaces like this to exist and feel safe for those thriving there far more than I need to be a member of it, and I will walk away if it is best for the space itself. It wouldn't be the first time I've been a lightning rod for someone(s) and their grief and I do not internalize any more than my own mistakes.

The inciting incident happened while planning this damn speed-dating thing with an overlapping group -- I honestly should have shut it down or walked away from weeks ago because it lacked cohesion. I definitely suffered from the sunken cost fallacy, but I also recognized over the past week that the space would not safe enough to open. Sunday, in a Tao kind of leadership, I prompted the planners to cancel the event and let me draft a note explaining why. In the time of processing all that, though, the other planners -- all white women -- got wind of some of what was going on. Ironically, the person who was nearest to the controversy has been the most forthcoming and accepting, recognizing that she had failed to contain her feelings in a moment of vulnerability and ended up creating a hostile space. She says she's in a better place and seems very mindful of the space she takes up (and how to not do so, at least most of the time). Meanwhile the woman who started the dating project but has otherwise been least involved (and was very much not present at the inciting incident) has been just BESIDE HERSELF with internalized blame so I've had to facilitate that a bit.

And my kettle broke and the replacement won't get here until tomorrow. :(

I'm having trouble staying asleep, so I may be gaming and reading all day, just waiting for any reactions to my apology and next steps.

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Gender Jumper

Is Techno-Pagan a Thing?

Cycles