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Goths and Paganism: an interesting article I found |
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Gothic Paganism: Letting in the Dark
October 14th. 2007
Wicca and Neo-Paganism are most commonly associated with the ecosophical movement that began in the 1960s. Although Neo-Paganism has much older roots than that, our most outspoken and activist-minded Witches tend to hail from this era.
Unsurprisingly, this generation of Wiccans and Neo-Pagans share many of the same ideals associated with the hippie movement which they lived through. They are ecologically conscious, and their lifestyle is one that hearkens back to nature and the simpler ways associated with tribal times. They favor a matriarchal system and a social structure in which all participants share equally the burden of responsibility. And they are often polyamorous, or at the very least polysensual, rejecting the Puritanical morality of our culture and instead celebrating the body and its pleasures as something natural, beautiful, and sacred.
In general, Wicca and Neo-Paganism can therefore be seen as religions of light, life, and love. That is, if you look only at the generation which arose from the 1960s and the direct inheritors of those Gaia-centered faiths.
Yet there is a new generation of Neo-Pagans. They are the children of the 1990s, the notorious Gothic movement of Generation X. Having attracted the attention of the press in recent years, mainstream media has unfairly demonized the Gothic movement.
Talk show hosts and tabloid reporters have been drawn to the movement like gawkers to a freak show, and instead of depicting its diverse members in an objective and positive light, they have tended to blatantly sensationalize the Goths.
In the hands of the media, Goths have become Satanists and necrophiliacs, delusional, self-proclaimed vampires and sexual deviants. While the negative image propagated by the press is largely unfair and untrue, the reticent, somewhat secretive nature of the Goths has not helped to alleviate the situation.
When it comes down to it, Goths are no better or worse than any other group of young people struggling to define themselves. In every social movement, there are a few attention-seekers and fanatics whose exploits tend to reflect badly upon everyone else.
Ordinarily, the positive presentation of more rational members of the group serves as a counterpoint to the extremists. Yet, the Gothic movement is by nature something very dark, and this darkness inspires fear and misunderstanding even when presented by the most level-headed and respectable Goths.
The hippie movement chose to distinguish itself with extroverted revelry and bright, psychedelic colors. Although the appearance and dress of a typical hippie was a little wild and unusual, it did not possess the ominous look associated with the modern Goth. Goths favor introverted meditation and dark, somber clothes.
They dress all in black, accenting their outfits with silver jewelry done in the motifs of bats, razors, and skulls. This image is admittedly intimidating, but part of the point is to intimidate. Goths not only embrace the darkness. They seek to embody it. They dress the way they do in a not-so subtle reminder that death and decay are everywhere.
Many Goths consider themselves a wake-up call for all the shiny, happy people out there who think the world is all shopping malls and suburban kitsch. The Goth, with his painfully thin frame and his cadaverous make-up is screaming to everyone: suffering is real.
Darkness is real.
The movement is not simply a rebellion against sterile, fake suburbia. Most Goths are also very spiritual individuals. Many started out in strict religions, typically Catholicism or Southern Baptism. Even in childhood they found they were in intellectual conflict with the teachings of these faiths, and they quickly drifted away, nevertheless seeking something to fulfill their need for meaning and spirituality.
In adolescence, when they gained more control over what they could read and study, most of them found themselves drawn to Wicca and Neo-Paganism. These religions appealed to their need for an individualized spirituality, yet the Goddess and Earth religions still did not account for the darkness that the Goths saw reflected everywhere.
Deeply sensitive and introspective, the Pagans of Generation X are reacting to many of the same social issues that spawned the hippie movement in the sixties. They see a world torn by hatred and prejudice that is constantly, somewhere, at war. Impotent spectators of a tragedy they have inherited, they despair over the casual destruction of the environment and the equally casual destruction of the human spirit by corporations and big business.
Yet, where the movement of the sixties was driven by an overwhelming optimism that there was still time to heal the damage and return to a healthier, more holistic way of life, the Gothic Pagans react most deeply to the sense that the final line has been crossed.
The Gothic movement is inextricably linked with millenarianism. While their mystical vision is not exactly apocalyptic, most Goths are reacting to the fin de siecle decadence and anxieties that have gripped our culture in the late 1990s.
There is within the movement an acute awareness that times are changing, but in order for change to happen, old ways must decay and die. To such Gothic Pagans, this is very much the time when "things fall apart" and "the center cannot hold."
Too independent to work together in groups, they nevertheless have achieved a unique sort of long-distance community dedicated to networking and disseminating knowledge and ideas. This is spread out across the country and much of the Western world, maintained through amateur publications and correspondence networks. By remaining as loosely and informally connected as possible, these new Pagans have created an extremely flexible structure of faith that will bend and not break in the face of a storm.
Immensely prolific, an entire underground of small publications has grown up in the past decade, each dedicated to the dark and somber style of art typical to the Gothic movement. Publications with titles like Necropolis, Catacomb, Carpe Noctem, The Azrael Project Newsletter, Disenchanted, and Shadowdance abound. Many of these do not overtly acknowledge the spiritual aspect of the movement, though the mystical content of the poetry and short fiction pieces is undeniable.
The Azrael Project Newsletter, which transitioned from print to the Internet, is one of the few publications to make the spiritual nature of the movement overt. Conceived by artist Leilah Wendall, this publication is faithfully dedicated to "a macroscopic understanding of the Angel of Death" in all his myriad guises.
The poetry and philosophic observations of the APN's readers are typical of the literature of the entire movement, overtly spiritual or not. In all cases, the primary image is that of death, a death that is not to be feared and reviled but to be embraced tenderly, unflinchingly.
Death is often personified as a dark angel or even a vampire and through these anthropomorphic vehicles; it is depicted in romantic, sensual, and even sexual imagery.
Through such metaphors, death becomes a mystical, transformative experience that should be embraced as a positive force of change and renewal.
Because this new generation of Neo-Pagans has chosen to embrace the darker aspect of life, their older counterparts often shun them. Dedicated as they are to religious freedom and tolerance, most traditional Wiccans and Neo-Pagans cannot see beyond the black funerary trappings to the legitimate mystical practices beneath. But they are there and, informal as the movement is, solitary though each Gothic Pagan may be, there is an underlying unity to their mystical vision.
At the core, Goths revere death – death as transformative change.
It is easy to look upon the sinister outer trappings of the movement and cast judgment. The Gothic Pagan does ruminate upon death and dying, possibly to a degree that may seem obsessive to the outside observer. His clothes, his music, and the character of his ritual are often somber, drear, or even macabre. This morbidity may inform his entire lifestyle, yet often its influence is subtle and manifests mostly as a serious mindset and a tendency toward introspection and solitude.
Yet, as observed earlier, these somber, reserved, and brooding individuals almost universally cultivate an intense creativity. The Gothic movement is not only a mystical movement. It is also a vitally artistic movement, yielding a wide range of poetry, artwork, fiction, film and music. This is the other side of death: its ability to clear the way for creation and regeneration.
Is it any wonder that some of our most brilliant and prolific artists are the youthful ones who led brief and tragic lives? Death and darkness, rather than obscuring or eclipsing life, serve only to make it shine with a clearer light.
This is the truth that the Gothic Pagans are seeking to embody in their lives, their works, and their very aesthetic: the darkness is necessary. Death is necessary, and we must look at these things unflinchingly if we are to understand them and control the roles they play in our lives.
The Goth looks into his Shadow and embraces it. It is as much a part of him as is the light, and only as a whole and balanced being will he be able to survive the changing times ahead.
In all things there must be a balance, and in a dynamic system, the existence of two polar forces struggling against one another only increases the dynamism and staves off stagnation. Those who follow the path of the darker mysteries are the necessary and natural counterparts of those magickal workers dedicated to light and life. If the Goths seem extreme in their embodiment of these mysteries, it is only because the darkness is so suppressed within our culture right now.
Even other Wiccans and Neo-Pagans tend to shut away the darkness, vilifying it and denying the crucial role it plays in their lives. Someone has to remind us that these forces exist and have a positive aspect, and as much as the Goths have chosen the darkness, I think the darkness has also chosen the Goths.
As a mystical system, Gothic Paganism is a very powerful tool to self-awareness and self-realization. There is no looking away from this dark mirror, even when all it reflects to you is your own face, decaying to a skull.
The Goth, like the Tibetan Buddhist monk practicing the Chod ceremony, does not reject this image: he revels in the liberation it conveys. For the children of the 13th generation of America, standing as they are on the uncertain threshold of a new millennium, this understanding of death as a gateway to change and renewal is not just a choice of religion or lifestyle.
It seems to be their birthright.
Copyright: Copyright 1999-2007 Michelle Belanger
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