Credo : Rage and Love – Plan for Utopia, Act for Apocalypse

So. I’ve been doing some pretty demanding soul-searching on the question of what to call myself, how to identify, spiritually and philosophically. Someone started discussing the word “Warlock” on another forum, and this response just poured out of me. I guess it’s this: I’d LIKE to be a Druid. But that’s not really an adequate response to my reality.
Interested to hear your thoughts, my good people …

“Warlock” : well you got it spot in in your discussion of its etymology. Oath-breakers. Renegades. Outcasts.
As an ex Catholic, the idea of embracing my apostasy appeals to me. I used to be much more mild. I described myself as a “committed agnostic”, ie I strongly believed we couldn’t know, and I was a “lapsed Catholic”, that is I wasn’t practising, but I often attended Mass at holidays with family, and felt much nostalgia and respect for the Church.

However, as time has gone by, and as I’ve learned more, thought more, experienced more, I’ve become more Radical and uncompromising in my rejection of the Church. One cannot have lived through the revelations of systemic sexual abuse, cover-ups, murder through neglect, the hiding of the bodies, that have been coming out these last years and remain indifferent. Increasingly, I have come to see the Church as a Monster, and an apparatus of Empire.
This is not to say that I deplore Catholicism or Christianity per se, as i can see a lot of the appeal, the beauty, and the solace they have brought to millions.

But Organised Religions are the Spiritual Arm of Empire. They have colonised our souls, and they have extracted their raw materials. They have commodified our relationship with the Divine and sold it back to us. They have ruled through guilt, fear, secrecy, and obfuscation. Their paths are littered with destruction and suffering. They have twisted our relationships to our bodies, to our spirits, to each other.
And, in my deep, questing search these last years, I have begun to embrace the identity of oath-breaker, of apostate, of heretic. I would be a pagan gladly, but my world and my culture are post-Christian, not pre-Christian. No amount of communing with Nature and being One with the world, no amount of reconstruction of gods and spirits and rituals from vague and fragmentary relics can erase two thousand years of the Empire of the Unseen.
And so, the part of me that yearns towards the Light, and integration, would call himself a Druid. That is a noble and beautiful identity.

But the other part of me, for whom history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken, the part that has lived with guilt and sorrow, and has hated himself for his Nature, that part says yes, I break your oath. I go beyond the Hedge into the Wilderness. I reject your poor promises and faint hope.

I am a Warlock. I am a Witch. 

All that is profane is sacred. 

Fair is foul and foul is fair.

Now, lest you think me crazy and irrational: these are not ill-considered simplistic superstitions. This is not hashtag occultism. These are intensely considered philosophical positions. These are nuanced beliefs about the nature of reality and consciousness.

I am not a delusional idiot. I am a sane man fighting for his soul.

These are not statements of “objective reality”. These are not anti science, anti rational positions …. This is … a metaphor, if you will. And metaphor does not deal in empirical rationality. This is a playful and powerful way of reclaiming the spiritual narrative that has been stunting our growth, without falling into the equally simplistic trap of “fundamentalist atheism”.

If anyone wants to know more about any of this, whether they find it repulsive or attractive, I’m very willing to talk. I’m finding I have rather a lot to say ..

Saturday, November 9, 2019
1:38 AM

 

Thank you all for your wise, kind words. THIS is the problem. We want to be Druids; we NEED to be Witches, Warlocks, Sorcerers, Outcasts: Rebel Angels. We need Horned Gods and Scarlet Women to be howling in the streets. Peace and Love is beautiful; we need Rage and Love. The time for peace is past. 

Come, Heretics! 

Come, Freaks! 

Come, Maleficiae! 

Come, Children of the Apocalypse! 

It is already too late! Let them not say of us: they died without a fight. For we are slowly dying, but look there! … they stir, they live. And with them, a generation rise. A New Star in our skies.

I’ve really been struggling with this. It’s not so much that I NEED to define myself, it’s rather that I’m starting to realise that such definition is a magical act. You see, I think that in a perfect world, we’d be content to call ourselves “spiritual” (which is what I do now in mixed company, instead of my old “agnostic”; it does actually cover the bases!). When I was teenager grappling with these questions, I used to call myself a “Seeker”, and that still really describes the fundamental thing.
Since I started my magical and philosophical experiments twenty years ago, I’ve most often leaned towards “Magician”, which, again, is basically it, right? But in the last couple of years, I’ve felt the call to be more than a Magician. I want to minister and serve others. I want to teach and to help others on their Paths, whatever they are. I truly believe that there are as many ways to Enlightenment and to Wisdom as there are people, and that some people benefit greatly from a system and even a hierarchy to work within. Just as some are better off forging their own path, picking and choosing, going with instinct, taking what works.
About ten years ago, when I started my first formal magical diary, I entitled it Leabhar Draíocht. I pondered in the opening entries whether I might not be on the Druid Path. Then in the last two years, as I heard the call to neo Druidry, I felt that here, finally, was a Path that really made sense to me. I began pursuing it with gusto. But something was missing, something was blocking me. I had never felt so at home with a belief system and philosophy. I have been working with the Irish Celtic gods for twenty years. The initial lessons of the Bard grade clicked into place beautifully. They were not even really new to me. They felt more like remembering than discovering. These were in my heart’s blood.
But I kept voraciously reading all around me. I kept reading not just about Druidry and Celtic paganism, but also about Ceremonial Magick, Goetia, Chaos Magic, Witchcraft, Shamanism, Christian Mysticism, the History of Religions, philosophy of mind, theories of Consciousness, Animism, Spiritualism, anthropology, the Paranormal, and many other things. I have been insatiable.
And just recently, I have realized this (for me at least, I can’t speak for others): being a Druid is wonderful. It is noble, it is in harmony with Nature and the World, and the Otherworld. It is inspiring, healing, it makes us better people. I WANT to be that.
But isn’t there a certain luxury in claiming that identity? Druids were wise, respected elites of their society. They were suppressed, to a degree, by Christianity, but in many ways they continued in all but name: the Bardic orders continued, the Brehons still made and gave the laws; the monks, priests and nuns in many respects continued the work of the Druids. Celtic Christianity adopted much of the Druidic cosmology, attitude, poetry, and even magic. Most of the Insular Celtic saints were pretty great magicians! And so it went on.
But. It didn’t go on forever. The Bardic Colleges were eventually suppressed. Celtic Christianity was suppressed. And, something I only really started thinking about recently, in Ireland the integrated, holistic, almost animist Catholicism of the populace was also suppressed. The time of the Penal Laws and the Plantations was utterly savage, and involved a violent repression of Irish culture, language, and belief. Catholicism was similarly stamped out in England, but in Ireland it was every aspect of the Culture. And then the Famine … We weren’t taught the full truth of the Famine, even in school in Ireland in the ’80s and ’90s. We weren’t taught that it was tantamount to calculated genocide. That not only was there more than enough food in Ireland, not only was it being exported to England in the face of the horror of Famine, but that some of those responsible for this were consciously and calculatedly doing it as a tool of repression and subjugation. They thought it would usefully destroy the backbone of Irish culture, and rejoiced in the fact.
And who stepped in to fill the void? The Church. The Catholic Church in Ireland after the Famine basically seized power and became the institution responsible for all the horrors that they perpetrated in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Don’t get me wrong, i know that they did also provide much in the way of social cohesion (education, charity, social organisation etc), but it was all on their terms. They were the only game in town. And if you didn’t grow up in Ireland before 2000, you have no idea of the horrendous damage that was done. I’m sure you’ve all heard the more egregious stories (mother and baby homes, Magdalen laundries, the Kerry Babies, the mass graves of children killed by neglect, paedophile predator priests, protected and hidden by the hierarchy …. The list is too long and too painful to go into just now). But it’s impossible to give a sense of the all pervasive warping of a whole society’s relationship to guilt, shame, sexuality, sin … Many Catholic priests and nuns were also genuinely good and brave people. Many gave their lives in service not only to their god but to their fellow human beings. But the institution was rotten, and clung on like death to the power, privilege, and prestige that they held.
And meanwhile, over the last three hundred years, in Britain, we have a Druid Revival. But by whom, and for whom? The elite and the powerful. Educated, privileged White Straight Men. Freemasons. Anglican Vicars. Gentlemen Archaeologists and Antiquarians. And, lacking a romantic enough pagan tradition of their own, they looked, as ever, to the Celtic Fringe of their oldest colonies to provide a touch of myth and magic. All the while working for the suppression of the Celtic cultures as living traditions, they caught and pinned and collected them like butterflies on a page in a book.
I don’t mean for a moment that this was their conscious project, and I think that much of the work done by the Druid Revival, the Romantic Movement, the Celtic Twilight, was not only vital work of conservation, but also provided much wonderful original material (sometimes passing one off as the other, of course!). However, there is a fundamental irony in the fact that the men (and it was almost always men) engaged in these pursuits were product and part of that very Imperial English Establishment that was not only fighting to suppress analogous belief systems all over the world, but also fighting to crush all opposition, independence, and revolution in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. To clear the Highlands, to plant the Irish farmlands, to kill off the languages and cultures of their very own Celtic Fringe, in case they gave too much of a sense of national identity and independence to those who practised them.
And then, in the 20th century, we have neo Paganism and Druidry. We all know the history now. We all are well aware and have made our peace with the origins of neo Druidry and Paganism. We know that they are products of their time, and that, flaws and all, they gave us what we have today. We must never forget that. But the fact remains that they are inherently elite, conservative, privileged, English and male, at their root. It’s wonderful that they have given us such rich soil for growth, especially in terms of feminism and women’s role in spirituality. I thoroughly applaud and revel in how neo Paganism has put women at the forefront of spiritual practice and leadership. But let’s face it, we’re not there yet, even on that. And gods know, modern Paganism has its fair share of scandal and abuse of power, of sexism, homophobia, racism, etc. In fact, it sometimes seems that there is an obsession with recreating the hierarchies, the quibbles over dogma and practice, the purity and authenticity contests, that have always characterised the very Church we sought to escape from.
I love the philosophy of Druidry, especially as expressed by OBOD. That’s why I chose it. I love its egalitarian ideals, I love its deep promotion of Peace and Harmony.

However. We cannot pursue Peace and Harmony in a bubble. We cannot be apolitical. Druidry, it strikes me, is a Path of Integration. We are so lucky to be able to choose it. But we must recognise that privilege, and we must be aware that not everyone has it.
And this brings me back (finally!) to my point: to name oneself a Druid is a magical and political act. It is a beautiful one.
But it cannot express the Rage and Love that I believe I myself must now embrace. A Druid is wise and peaceful. A Druid is respected, integrated, a pillar of a Utopian community. A Druid is a leader, a teacher, a philosopher, a storyteller, a historian, a magician. A Druid is learned.
But a neo Druid has their roots not only in the land and the Old Ways, but also in Empire, in White Supremacy, in Patriarchy, in Anglocentrism, in heteronormativity. We are not those things, not now. Many of us fight those things, now. But they are also part of our heritage. We must own them, own up to them, denounce them, destroy them. Even in Druid and Pagan Orders (again, i really do think OBOD is doing well on this, especially compared to some), these things are rampant.
And so, while we need the Druids, for they are the leaders of the Culture that we hope one day will come about, we also need the rebels.
I did not choose to be Catholic, at least not at first. But at one point, I made an oath. And I now renounce it. To define oneself against something has power. It is the power of counter-culture, of subversion, of transgression. To be a Witch, to be a Warlock, a Sorcerer, an Apostate, a Heretic, is to rebel. To rise up. To refuse to serve the Empire. To work for its downfall.

We need the Druids, for they represent the leaders of the World we wish to live in. But we need the Witches, for they represent the refusal of the World we have.

They are perhaps two sides of the same coin. Or they are the inward and the outward spiral. The Druid turns deiseal from the East: his is the Light of the Rising Sun. The Witch turns tuathalach from the North: for hers is the Dark of the Moon. The Shaman dances whirling in the South, for theirs is the Fire in the Blood. And the Dreamers lie dreaming in the West, for theirs is the Otherworld, across the sea, forever out of reach, forever present, forever lost.
We must be all of them, now. Each of us as we are called, each of us as we are gifted.
For there is a War in Heaven, and we cannot be the Forgetful People, who carried on their revels, who never chose a side, and who faded from the world full of the beauty and sadness of twilight.
Rage and Love. We must be both. 

Mark Devlin

Mythopoetic Cultural Anthropologist Bard

Tour Guide, Translator, Father of Two