Yule 2020

What seems to be becoming increasingly clear is the identity of both capitalism and so-called liberalism with white, male privilege in the West. As a white, male Westerner, I qualify to be included among the culprits of the global violence and dispossession that, according to Pankaj Mishra, have “made Britain and the United States uniquely powerful and wealthy.” Pegi Eyers, in her article “Boundaries can be Sacred,” says that “instead of looking to the cultural and spiritual property of Indigenous people, we may want to focus on the old/new templates for magical and mystic practices in the original pre-colonial culture(s) of Old Europe.” Whether it was ‘Old Europe’ in Marija Gimbutas’ understanding, but after I had come to discover how devastatingly we European colonialists had eliminated the Central California Indians, I felt that I had no choice at the end of the 1960s but to depart from beloved San Francisco during the height of countercultural hippiedom and return to where my ancestors had previously come from in Europe. The day in fact on which I left the City by the Bay was also that of the Kent State shootings by the National Guard. Amsterdam became my European home-base, and apart for a later hiatus again in San Francisco and the inheritance of my mother’s condominium overlooking the Narragansett Bay, I have pursued my European heritage ever since – including its pre-Christian religious understandings and calendrical practices.
 
But I am still a privileged white male from and of the West. And while my Indo-European spirituality includes the pagan legacies of both India and Persia along with that of the Germanic-, Celtic-, Romance-, Greek- and Balto-Slavonic-speaking peoples, I still adore and continue to champion the remarkable achievements of Euro-Western culture despite its alleged patriarchal bias. This does not mean that I am not a critic of politics – and a highly intensive critic at that, that I do not support the rights and equality of women as well as those of all peoples regardless of race or religion, and that I do not wish for the emancipation and advance of everyone. Though I have personally benefited from it beyond the norm, I remain disgusted with capitalism, especially corporate capitalism, as a prevailing economic system. This disgust applies equally to imperialism and the use of military might for any individual ends rather than employment of the means for collective negotiation and mandate. I am proud to say that a quarter of my family is black, and I applaud such achievements as the Chinese miracle with the painful exceptions of Hong Kong and the Uighurs. I also resonate strongly with the classical folk religion of China as well as with Confucianism and to an extent Daoism, with the Shinto of Japan, with Afro-Latin spirituality and with indigenous spirituality across the board including that of Native Americans. But while I respect the Kemetic and Canaanite traditions, my own spirituality is fully and virtually exclusively centred on the Indo-European and especially its Classical (Greco-Roman), Vedic, Heathen, Baltic and Celtic components.

I have admittedly been extremely privileged and, while now enjoying (if that is the right word) my final days, am enormously grateful for the benefits and advantages with which my cut through life has presented to me. Consequently, I cannot and will not apologise for the luck that fortune has bestowed upon me. It is and remains a centrality to my life story, and despite the pandemic and relative cramped-ness, I could not be more thankful than I am for my London residence that I share with my beloved to weather out whatever there is yet to become. And if privilege is an advantage, it is one that I refuse to reject but hope instead to be able to use in whatever time I have left to contribute to the dream I hold for our planet, the whole of humanity and the bio-diversity of life in general. Despite my privileged insularity and ease, I am horrified by the pitiful hardship endured by those encountering the strife of war, the challenges of migration and refugeeship, the consequences of extreme natural calamities, and the brutal pain of thirst, hunger and the frigid cold. No one should have to undergo such sufferings. That alone should be our beginning operative premise.

Admittedly I have much to learn from the likes of Samir Amin, Ashis Nandy, Syed Hussein Alatas, Fatema Mernissi, Orlando Patterson, Wang Hui, Roberto Unger and Arturo Escobar, and I find myself almost always in agreement with Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Ian Shapiro, Fintan O’Toole and Glenn Greenwald, but I will not dismiss John Stuart Mill, David Hume, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke or Voltaire and will continue to struggle to understand Immanuel Kant. My favourites remain to be Baruch Spinoza and Friedrich Nietzsche but also Albert Camus, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jean Baudrillard, Aldous Huxley, Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya and Jacques Derrida. The vast bulk of those that I have found to speak to me are undoubtedly male and mostly European. I only question whether the advance in global thinking necessarily entails an abandonment of this particular ‘club’ in order to endorse feminist and anti-colonial writers. In my opinion, non-white peoples are in no way inferior, but I will not and cannot repudiate the important contributions of Western thought.

As a pagan, I respect secular understandings as well as the overall thrust of Buddhism. Whilst I do not agree with the perspective of the Dharmic religions of Hinduism and Buddhism principally as well as Jainism and Sikhism, my greater problem is with Abrahamic religiosity – all of it – including its kindred faith of Zoroastrianism. Although the article that “JAPAN keeps Islam at bay by putting restrictions on Islam and ALL Muslims” is not true, I agree with the general sentiment and only wish that it could be extended globally and include both Judaism and Christianity as well. I recognise the highly controversial position of my wish and that something more than half our planet adheres to one of these three religions that originated from the Levant, but I would be less than honest if I said otherwise. Nevertheless, I still affirm the right of everyone to believe as is individually wished and will continue to defend that right, though at the same time I am radically opposed to the kind of mentality behind Israeli treatment of Palestinians, Christian crusades, the pogroms of the Church against heretics and its Witch-Craze, and Islamofascism and jihadism. The world as I see it, perhaps only a dream-world at best, is one in which every individual possesses intrinsic dignity by default, a degree of comfort is insured for everyone, and an operative harmony has been established against which or within which discussion and negotiation of difference and problems may be undertaken.

I write this on Christmas Eve. The 13-day yule celebrations that Richard and I follow concluded yesterday, and we are now slipping gently into a recovery mode. We begged out of being included with the truncated family xmas dinner this time, and since we did, London has moved into Tier 4 concerning the pandemic, and the gathering would probably be illegal in any event. The UK’s second lockdown had ended on the 2nd of December, and the day after we had been to the British Museum for “Tantra” we went to the Royal Academy for the greatly delayed “Summer Exhibition.” These annual events are always overwhelming but enjoyable, and there were a number of pieces this time that related to isolation, loneliness and the coronavirus. Afterwards, we went to the Sloane Club for dinner – taking advantage of its post-lockdown re-opening. We returned to the Royal Academy the following week for the Tracy Emin and Edvard Munch exhibit. Eventually I came to appreciate Emin much more than I had initially. The next day we were again at the Club – this time with Gin, Rix and Sylvester for a pre-xmas/yuletide eve family dinner. Another highlight for this month of December was the Australian production of the all-male Pirates of Penzance at the Palace Theatre. It was a highly engaged audience with everyone seemingly thrilled to be once again attending live theatre, and the Gilbert and Sullivan work was a thrill in itself. And then a few days later, we were back into a tier 4 lockdown with theatres and restaurants closed again.

There have been two Sophia online lectures: Kenneth Brophy critiquing Alexander Thom, and Marc Frincu on Armenian archaeology. In addition, there was an online moot with Aki Cederberg speaking on the sacred soulscape and myths of Europe. There has also been a blót for the winter solstice which I could only hear but not see or participate in thanks to a glitch with Zoom. Scott has since rectified that. I am otherwise currently very slowly reading Alan Hollinghurst’s The Folding Star – some of which has been engaging, and some not overly. Apart for food and vitamin shopping, we have only been out to go back to Judith to re-sign our LPAs thanks to more Office of the Public Guardian bureaucratic ridiculousness. We did try to see the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction from Battersea Park, but the celestial weather has not allowed this possibility. For the yule, we have interspersed the feriae with occasional 5:2 fasts but otherwise feasted and imbibed to a more than sufficient excess.

Perhaps the strangest for me has been the realisation that my being now in the concluding days of life, there is no real goal left and no place elsewhere to get to that would surpass the contentment I enjoy with my partner in our tight, confined and virtually insufficient London flat. Yes, we both adore Amsterdam and miss the farm, but I am finding completion in the very here and now despite the Covid-19 uncertainties, the tiresome physical restrictions and the ongoing continuance of the Trump Presidency. At least it looks as if there is finally to be a UK-EU Brexit deal that might make life a bit easier than had been otherwise anticipated. On this, we are yet to see. While the much-appreciated love in my life is embraced by a domestic comfort that is a consequence of privilege, I think of the many, many lorry drivers in Dover who are unable to be with their families for Christmas and the many, many who have been abducted or who have attempted to escape from violence or abject penury or both but remain in a seemingly unending limbo of incertitude and raw tribulations. While it is doubtfully too much to expect that the new year of 2021 might rectify some or any of this, it remains as my wish. Mark Carney’s fourth and final Reith lecture concerning the environment has been one of the more encouraging things I have heard of late. Our planet’s ecology and its sustainable recovery is perhaps the most fundamental of all, but the well-being of virtually everyone must be our final holy grail target – and despite our cultural blindnesses and biases and the divisiveness of unchanging myopic vision. May we as the human species yet grow and mature into a viable sanity!