I went to the Pagan studies conference at Claremont this weekend. The keynote speaker for the day was Hyperion, who talked about the difficulty in finding the Divine within for gay men. There are no gay gods in ancient sacred pantheons, at least not any that we know about. How can people resonate with deities that they have little in common with or who fail to address key aspects of their identity? So in Hyperion’s spiritual tradition, the Unnamed Path, shamanic work was done to discover the gods and goddesses for gay men.
This started me thinking. Who is my Goddess? With which image, force or ancient sacred pantheon do I most resonate?
I could claim the Celtic deities. My father’s family was made up of Scots/Irish from the north and plain Irish from Eire. But then there was the Cherokee woman in my father’s line whose husband escaped from a British prison during the Revolutionary War and who hid him out in the mountains while he healed and the war ended. She and her people are my direct ancestors too. However to claim her deities would be appropriation.
My mother’s people were Irish and German with a little French thrown in. If I were to go back far enough, I’d find the Celts wandering through these lands. So perhaps my pantheon is Celtic after all. That’s appropriation too, but since it is from the dominant culture, I guess it would be OK.
But the Ancestor Project from Oxford, the one that traces mitochondrial DNA, says the mutation of my genome first appeared in the Pyrenees between France and Spain, long before the Celts appeared. This woman they call Helena was apparently quite prolific, as 41% native Europeans can trace their DNA back to her. I don’t know who her gods were, but I’m imagining something like the Clan of the Cave Bear. Living in urban Southern California, that doesn’t resonate a lot with me.
And Helena’s ancestors migrated up through the Mideast. Maybe that is why Lilith and Nidaba have always appealed to me. But no, these deities were manifest long after my ancestors passed through.
Of course we all can trace out lineage back to Africa. Over three million years ago, did Lucy have a concept of deity? Did she look across the savannah and hope some unknown force would help her find water?
Did her ancestors, our earliest ancestor, some 60 kilometers to the north and a million years earlier have a sense of something sacred?
Do these most ancient deities, if they existed, still exist without those who resonate with them? Do deities die or just fade away?
Random thoughts from a conference: Perhaps like Hyperion, I should do shamanic work. Perhaps.
I once interviewed a seven year old Pagan. When I asked her what the Goddess looked like, she told me the Goddess was very beautiful and that her skin was blue and green. That I can resonate with, with the wind and rain, the sun’s waxing power and the coming of Spring.