Homily for the New Moon in Aries
Dearly Beloved,
Happy New Moon in Aries!
On this very special New Moon, occasioned by a solar eclipse and thus reinforcing and complicating the New Moon formula lunar energy with the IAO formula solar energy of the death and rebirth of the Sun, I am moved to talk about a subject which is not popular in most circles for obvious reasons: suffering, and the role of suffering in the spiritual life.
It is part of the fate of people to suffer. No matter how rich and powerful, no matter how poor and humble, we all experience suffering. Sometimes our suffering comes from without, from our bodies and our circumstances. This sort of suffering can often be alleviated…we treat the illness, we mend the injury, we minister to those in need, and so on. Sometimes, however, our suffering comes from within, and this sort of suffering is often much harder to alleviate.
In moments where we suffer, we tend to ask simple questions, the questions of a child: “Can’t this be otherwise? Is this necessary?” But let us assume that we have already answered these questions: no, it cannot be otherwise and yes, this suffering is necessary, by which I mean that it cannot, under any possible circumstances, be avoided.
Are we, as pagans who believe in a naturalized theology, to argue with this suffering? Are we to say through our tears: “How can this happen? Why am I suffering?” Do we, as pagans, demand an account of suffering in the same manner as our siblings among the other religions? I say “yes”. Yes, we need an account of suffering, a justification for suffering, a way to give our suffering meaning.
As theists, many of us believe that the events which occur in the physical world are ordained to some degree by divine providence. We believe that the Divine, in some form or another, manifests the phenomena that we experience through our lives in a way that is intended to guide us and move us forward towards growth, health, and prospering. In short, many of us believe that the Divine is benevolent. “The gods are good”.
Yes, that includes the dark, cthonic deities and spirits that can sometimes be scary and wild. Even the qlipoth serve a divine purpose, and the vast majority of the entities labeled as demons now had divine origins and were simply demonized by those who could not accept that the dark is just as much a part of nature as the light. Your average demon, just as much as your average angel, seeks and serves the good as best they can, and like angels and deities, most demons are “load-bearing”…they do metaphysical work holding reality together. In this sense, even the demons are good. All things are the Divine and all things serve the Divine…including suffering.
How do I know this? I cite three authorities: the lore and teachings that have been handed down for millennia, the accounts of mystics of almost all extant traditions, and the lived results of actually pursuing the spiritual life attested by practitioners throughout the ages.
Our most ancient lore has the deities and spirits teaching us medicine, herbalism, music, mathematics, astrology, astronomy, writing, agriculture, and metallurgy, as well as magick and religion. Every mystery, both light and dark, every part of our world, both sweet and spicy, all are the direct work of the Divine and administered in the Divine’s distributed form as the deities we come to know and with whom we work. Every bit of it (except for the “true demons” which we humans have created, such as “Capitalism”, “Colonialism”, and “Bigotry”) is holy. Sweet fruit for our bellies and mouths, sweet love for our bodies and hearts, and a world full of mysteries for our minds to explore…the lore of all traditions teaches that these are the blessings that the Divine is giving us.
In addition to the evidence of our shared traditions and lore, we have the innumerable mystical experiences recorded by practitioners all over the world and throughout history to attest to the basic goodness of the deities and spirits we have encountered. Again and again, people have experiences where they touch the Divine and the Divine touches them. And in these moments we see and feel the love of the Divine. We experience Their basic goodness as They urge us towards growth, towards goodness, and to the Great Work of unification with the Divine, of blessed theosis. They weep with us, They laugh with us, They cradle us in Their arms for the span of our lives, and finally They take us home at the end of the game so we can prepare for our next trip to the playground.
Finally, we have the attested and consistently reported results of people living the spiritual life: when someone pursues the Great Work (however you may know it), deliberately engages in consistent and sustained relationship with the Divine, and then pursues a life based upon that relationship, the result upon their psyche and life is beneficial and restorative. The Divine urges us on to the “Great Work”, “the Path”, the movement towards growth, development, and ongoing becoming more and more who we are. And as we pursue this Work, as we walk down the Path and grow, develop, and become, we become better people. We become happier, even when suffering. We become more loving, more wise, and more good, even in the very depths of despair.
Now, how does this connect to the problem of suffering? How does the evidence of our lore, our mystical experiences, and the beneficial changes within us as we do the Great Work answer the questions that burn within us as we suffer? To answer that question we have to move out of the very big concepts and entities that we have been talking about and get very small and very personal.
What does it do to us when we suffer? It inspires us to change and grow, to move beyond the suffering and into a new way of being. Sometimes this is true, and we relish in these moments. But often this is an easy way out, an easy excuse, the excuse of the abuser, that our suffering is really for our own good. In addition to this, there are times that, due to the horrors created by humans acting unethically, this process has been hijacked and suffering has been turned into torture. And there are times that it seems that our suffering from illness and age serves no purpose we can see. It is very hard to see how such cases as these can be turned to good, how our suffering can act as a crucible or serve some greater purpose in our spiritual development. I am the first to lament these moments, these places where the system seems to break down.
But there is hope.
In the tale of Pandora, all the evils that plague humanity escaped from the jar which Pandora opened out of curiosity, but one thing remained within: hope. One thing was passed down from her, Pandora, the Receiver and Giver of All Gifts, mother of humanity, and catspaw in Zeus’s revenge on Prometheus for His acts of creation and the theft of fire: hope. This one thing became the common inheritance of every human as they were born into this world where the sufferings, the passions, as the ancients would have called them, have been set free: hope. All the suffering that anyone can ever encounter lives in a constant relationship, a constant dialectic, with one other force, our common birthright as minds and souls and hearts, our common gift from the Divine and the partner of suffering: hope.
And it is hope that lets us change. It’s hope that lets us grow. It’s the dance between suffering and hope that makes the Great Work possible, that lets us blossom into something more than we were before. The existence of time makes change possible, but it is the existence of hope that gives change a direction, that tells it which way to go. Suffering is a doorway to spiritual growth, but hope is what lets us keep walking through that doorway.
So go forward into this New Moon, beloved. Let hope lead you into your new possibilities as the Spring progresses, even as suffering teaches you its lessons. Let these divine twins, Hope and Suffering, teach you Their lessons.
In love,
Soror Alice
Art: John William Waterhouse, “Pandora”, (1896)