On The Blessedness Of Leadership

So this month I am moved to speak on that role that some of the greatest blessings and curses in human history have played. I am moved to speak on the one that comes to the front, the one that sets an example, the one who has a vision for the future and, for good or ill, is willing to do what it takes to fulfill that vision.

I am moved to speak on leadership.

I have very complex feelings about the concept of leadership. For most of my life, I have identified as some form of anarchist. For about twenty years or so, I was an anarcho-syndicalist, and now I am more or less an anarcho-communist. I believe that leadership, when legitimate, has to come from below, from the people who actually have to implement and live with the consequences of the important choices that leaders have to make.

This attitude on leadership extends to my magickal and spiritual beliefs. I believe that we are all our own spiritual authorities and that we are all responsible for the state of our own souls. While I am no longer very active in the Thelemite community, I am still a Thelemite, and at the core of Thelema is the conviction that our wills, our own free choices and the consequences that arise from those choices, are holy.

But while I hold these values, I am also forced by this aching world to accept, again and again, that leaders are a real thing. Some people want to lead, some people want to follow (though few will admit it), and very few people have the strength and the stamina to consistently refuse to do either. I have watched activist and pagan communities fall apart again and again because of a basic refusal to accept this reality. Thinking for ourselves all the time isn’t just extremely difficult, it is impossible for humans. We are social creatures and, as such, we are primed by biology to learn our behaviors from our parents and childhood communities. From birth, humans are looking for models, other people to give us cues on how to act and what to think. That is natural and normal and we should not indulge in some sort of toxic individualism or oppositional defiance that says any influence from others is somehow wrong.

So while I still cherish my desires for a bottom-up system of authority where we all fire our bosses, seize the means of production, and live in self-sufficient communities that are smaller than Dunbar’s Number and organized around common values and interwoven relationships, leaders of some sort will always be a thing. Some people are always going to be more aggressive, more willing to push their ideas and desires on others, and sometimes they will even be good at the job. There actually is such a thing as a good leader. The damage that the absence of good leaders has caused in our world is immense and speaks to the need to address that absence. It is unrealistic and childish to simply throw up our hands and say “no one should be in charge”, because if no one is in charge, if the chain of responsibility doesn’t finally end somewhere with someone, then no one can ever be held accountable. Things just sort of happen by the path of least resistance and while no one person or set of people is ever exactly “to blame”, bad things just keep happening and the most vulnerable people just keep suffering.

That is exactly what is happening now in the US…we have people who are leaders in name only because they can never be held accountable for their choices. Bad things just keep happening (and they’ve been happening since long, long before Trump) because there are no real consequences except for the victims. These people are like screeching, drunken toddlers, running around the government with swinging arms and dirty hands, and apparently no one can stop them from breaking the good plates and getting handprints on all the furniture.

Dearly beloved, if you will not accept it as an ethical justification for leadership, then for pragmatic reasons alone, for the purpose of having a chance to achieve justice and to get beyond a world of exploitation, corruption, and “good old boy networks”, accept that we must be able to hold people accountable in a constructive, healthy way. We need accountability in order to keep the vulnerable people among us safe and to make sure that bad actors don’t rise to positions of power and stay there.

For me, what it means to be a pagan is that I believe in a naturalized theology, which means that I believe that the Divine, in all of Their myriad forms, manifests Their essence and will in and through the natural world. The reality that we see throughout the natural world, including the worlds of our minds, emotions, and relationships, reveals the nature and will of the Divine. The creation points at the creator(s).

And the creation has leaders all over the place.

But nature is a crafty goddess. She hides secrets in plain sight. The leaders in nature are naturally held accountable by their own participation in the systems they lead. A queen ant is the leader of the nest in the sense that the other ants defend her and work for her benefit, even up to and including their own deaths. She is absolutely the most important single member of the nest. But if the nest fails, she dies. If she stops doing her job of eating and laying eggs, even for a short while, her hive, her children, will die. And then, in very short order, she will die.

Similarly, in a pack of wolves, the genetic parents of most of the pack—the misnamed “alphas”—are in every meaningful way the leaders. They lead movements and hunts and are treated preferentially by the pack. But if they fail their pack and that pack suffers and dies, the parents of the pack starve and their own family line may end forever.

Nature holds leaders accountable for their actions.

Now, nature has a lot of amazing, beautiful, and sometimes terrifying variety, and there are a lot of different ways we see relationships show up in our cousins among the other species on this planet. Notions of leadership like we have among humans aren’t universal by any means. But the fact that they show up in other species at all, the fact that leadership is not just a scam made up by the powerful and rich to rip the rest of us off, tells us that such a thing as virtuous leadership is possible. We can have leaders—both official and unofficial—that are good leaders. People that can help us clarify our wills and focus our aspirations. People that can help us solve problems. People that can help us thrive.

But it all falls apart when leaders cannot be held accountable. In nature, leaders depend upon those they lead and are personally invested in their lives and success. If the nest suffers, the queen suffers. If the pack suffers, the parents suffer. Thus nature teaches us the solution to our leadership problem: accountability. A direct causal connection between the welfare of the leaders and the welfare of those they lead. If our leaders thrive, we must also thrive. If we suffer, our leaders must also feel our pain.

I apologize, dear ones. Perhaps I have misnamed this homily. I set out to praise leadership and instead I have spent my time praising accountability. I must also confess that I am currently carrying a great burden related to this issue. The lack of accountability in our government, in our society, in our economy, and even in my most cherished spiritual and magickal communities, is causing so much harm to so many people that it is breaking my heart every day. And I am one of those people who are being targeted. My wife is one of those people. Friends and family all over the world are among those suffering. But even if I was safe and everyone I knew was immune from this great and ongoing suffering, so many others would not be. And that’s just not okay with me. We all deserve to thrive. I want good leaders and I believe that good leadership—virtuous leadership, in the Aristotelian sense—is possible. But without accountability, it is impossible.

I know many of you personally. I have been lucky enough to share sacred space and do magick with some of you. Some of you are leaders in our shared communities, and many more of you have it in you to be leaders. I ask you here, from my heart to yours: step up. Step forward. Speak up. Serve as ritualists. Write, create, and teach. Become. Take the reigns from those who will not be held accountable by creating a better alternative. New mages are coming to our traditions and new communities are forming every day. More tools for building and strengthening communities exist than ever before.

Use them.

So let us raise our voices and extend our hands to do the work (and the Work) that is necessary for all of us to thrive. Let us reform and repair or create and establish communities where those with power are held accountable in healthy and constructive ways. Let us reach out and take up the reigns of the imperfect world we have inherited.

Let us become leaders.

Blessed Full Moon, dear ones.

In love,

Soror Alice

Art: Rogelio de Egusquiza y Barrena, “Parsifal”, (1910)