Drawing Down the Moon (26 page)

Q.
I guess I have to ask you at this point—because many people in the Craft would raise this question—what do you think about interfering magically in that way? Many in the Craft would say that was unethical. What do you say about such an action, burning down someone's house?

A.
I would ask whether it was justified under the circumstances. I would say that if a grave injustice of that sort was committed, it was permissible. I myself have never willfully attacked anyone. But one of the things about the old Witches, they protected their community from oppression to the greatest of their ability to do so. And you would admit that this person was an alien to that community. He had made himself an alien, a tyrant. He was no longer a member of that community.

Q.
This brings up a related question. Many Neo-Pagans and Craft folk feel the Craft is apolitical and should remain so. But I gather you think of yourself as a political person. First of all, how would you describe your politics?

A.
I would describe myself as a spiritual socialist. I grew up in an anarchist family and, frankly, I love the statement “There's no government like no government,” but what I believe, undoubtedly, is that the answer is equal distribution of goods. In the one period of successful Pagan society that my people enjoyed, we enjoyed perfect socialism.

Q.
What period do you mean?

A.
I am talking about ancient Ireland, the period between the time that Ireland was so-called “Christianized” and the time that the Vikings interrupted the socialist economy and forced Ireland to revert back to the chieftain system in order to get enough military organization together to fight the Vikings. And then, once the chieftains found themselves in power, they started boogying with the English . . . so need I say more? There was a hundred-and-fifty-year “Golden Age.” But the problem was, we forgot that everybody else in northern Europe (despite the Aryan myth) had just barely swung down from the trees . . .

Q.
Let's get back to this idea of Paganism being apolitical . . .

A.
It is not! Nothing could be more “political” than an idea of this kind. But this is the knotty problem: if I lived in a country where there was a Marxist takeover, I would be just as much a threat to them as I am now, despite the fact that I am a socialist. A
truly
socialist culture would be working for the same ends as I am working for as a Pagan—the elimination of all constraint. But few socialist regimes are working for these goals. And the belief in socialist ideology based on materialism is, unfortunately, hollow. It leads to many of the same abuses as capitalism because it tends to ignore the true spiritual needs of human beings which are, in many cases, as important as material ones—although, frankly, I'd be the last person to tell someone who's starving that it will be all right in the next world. I don't think there is a next world.
This
is the next world!

Q.
You mean reincarnation?

A.
Yes. Like I said,
this
is the next world. I think we keep coming back. We are our children, so we had better get with it and make it better.

Q.
Do you think the Craft poses an alternative, a counterthrust? Are we a threat to the status quo?

A.
We always have been. We are for the absolute liberation of the human spirit from all constraint. We are for the godlike beauty and development of all persons.

Q.
Do you have a fantasy of what an ideal Pagan-Craft life would be like,
for you?
And what kind of society would it be?

A.
I would like to be the local nurse-Witch-midwife of a good-sized Irish village, the person people consulted when they got in trouble. The society would be socialist, Gaelic, free, and Culdee.

Q.
I keep coming back to this, but how do you reconcile your socialist politics with the common viewpoint on the left that the occult is a “copout”—you know, “Religion is the opiate of the people,” et cetera.

A.
The problem is this: Many people go into rabid politics to escape self-examination, just as many people go into heavy guru trips or straight religious trips to escape self-examination. A commitment
only
to politics is as much of a copout as anything else because it avoids the responsibility of developing the god-self along with developing the political self. I'm trying to do both. I think it's quite possible to do both.

As for religion being the opiate of the people, I'd say that opium is the religion of the people, at the present time. The real problem is that
institutional
religion is indeed an opiate and, in the form Marx saw it, religion was appallingly evil; it was satanically evil in that it crushed the free will of people and dulled their will to resist injustice. But you've got to remember that in his day and age the women and children were dragging coal carts through three-foot-high caverns in England, getting killed by the hundreds, never seeing the sun rise, working until they cast themselves down exhausted onto beds of rags, or drank themselves into insensibility, and then had to go out and “hook” to get enough money to feed their kids. Then these bastards would get up in the pulpit and refer to rich people as the “betters” of these people, these martyrs who patiently endured the most horrible insults to humanity. Sure, religion was the opiate of the people, but it was debased religion,
not
magic. Magic is not the opiate of the people.

Q.
What do you think is the relationship between feminism and the Craft? What do you think of the feminist Craft, of people like Z Budapest?

A.
I think that because the present rape-head is very antiwoman, the feminist Craft has a great amount of validity. And what Z and others are proposing—the idea of a purely woman's religion—has a definite place in Paganism. I think a lot of women need it in order to heal themselves of their terrible wounds. I think Z and the others are doing something important. But I do not find the feminist Craft
personally
important to me, largely because I did not go through a stage in which I was sexually subjugated. Most women have not been so fortunate. I think Z has been persecuted because she is a threat to everything straight people represent—and if you ain't a threat, you ain't worth much. But for me, the idea of a purely woman's religion is difficult. My own preference would be to draw power with males and females of equal number and equal levels of dominance.

I don't believe that there are any psychological differences between men and women. In fact, I think the big mystery of our society is that men and women are exactly alike and that this truth is being hidden under an incredible load of bullshit. I think that women are just as capable of being dominant and men are just as capable of being kind and loving. The proof of the latter is that men are dying off in droves at an early age because their emotions are being crushed. Now, I have driven bulldozers. I have shoveled shit. I have built barns. I have flattened men on their backs and fucked them until their eyeballs popped out. I have carried a knife from time to time. But also, I am incredibly tender and loving to my children. I am the biggest nurturer you ever saw in your whole life. I also cook well. What I want to see the end of is the frustration of the male father instinct, which is being diverted into violence, and the end of the frustration of the female lioness instinct, which is being diverted into bitchiness.

Of course men and women are physically different and that is really pleasurable, but I don't think their minds are that different. Men and women seem physically stronger than each other in different ways. Women have far more endurance than men. They have to, in order to endure the childbirth experience. Men are capable of brief, intense bursts of muscular output which were meant to be used in hunting down deer and whatnot.

As for religion, remember that in the ecstatic state it is very common for male gods to possess females and for female gods to possess males. As a matter of fact, the reversal of male and female roles in a body has long been considered a typical sign of the true ecstatic state.

Q.
Do you believe there was a former matriarchal period?

A.
Yes, at least in my culture—Ireland. Let's put it that way.

Q.
Do you believe a future one would be desirable?

A.
No, I do not. I do believe in a society in which all beings, male and female and neuter (if such should arise), would be valued. Some people do not ever want to define themselves sexually and I believe they should have that freedom.

Q.
Do you have any thoughts on homosexuality and bisexuality in the Craft?

A.
I consider bisexuality, by and large, a higher state than simply homosexuality or heterosexuality because it offers a greater number of alternatives. You should be able to love all people that you love freely. If you desire to give physical expression to that love, that should be permitted. If men choose to make love only to men, and if women choose to make love only to women, that's fine, but they should remember it is just as limiting as restricting yourself only to a member of the opposite sex.

Q.
As a Witch looking at our present civilization, how would you describe it? Since Witches look to pre-Christian sources for inspiration, what of the past should we look to, and what should we reject?

A.
First of all, I agree with the Tantric Buddhists that this is an age of darkness. This is an age of darkness greater than the darkness of the Middle Ages. We are seeing humanity's catastrophic hour in which we can either rise above it to greater glory than we possibly can imagine, or we can be obliterated as a species by the Great Mother.

After stating that idea of doom, I must say that I have hope. I'm just an optimist. If I weren't, I wouldn't be having any children. I do think we have progressed. I think scientific knowledge is wonderful and I think it has tremendous possiblities for increased spirituality. For one thing, it has opened to us the possibility of contact with other beings, ultimately. It has given us a far greater comprehension of the vastness of the cosmos than we ever had before. This is such an essential breakthrough.

There is no doubt in my mind that human beings as a species are growing up. The problem is we are in a sort of shaky adolescence. This is a critical point. The teenager can either commit suicide or it can accept life and go on to adulthood. The tendency to reject everything is the hallmark of evolutionary adolescence. And I think it is the duty of those of us who can see the writing on the wall to look with a mature eye on what our ancestors actually had before we progressed.

I do not believe that the past age was the Golden Age. Any time in which children are sacrificed or old people are sacrificed, or where slavery exists or where blatant sexism exists, is not a Golden Age. In ancient Ireland, for example, there are many myths that reveal a past history of both matriarchal and patriarchal abuse.

As far as those things from the primitive which should be preserved—the rites of passage, which are basically the links between ourselves and the natural cosmos which give our lives rhythm and meaning.
That
is the biggest message primitive life had to offer. It was the only thing that made it survive. Often they did not have a pot to piss in, or a window to throw it out of. If they didn't have good mysteries, they did not make it. There was tremendous discomfort and suffering that people had to face every day to survive. Primitive life is not idyllic. It is incredibly difficult, and the only thing that made it possible was that they had a spiritual technology which enabled them to survive the terrible physical hardships.

I went through a period in which I thought all technology was evil. But for those of us who have lived on farms, let me tell you, you go out and bust your ass in the hot sun for a while and you'll find out how much time you have for thinking about your life.

Q.
But don't you think there is too heavy a reliance on technology in our society, and a resultant limitation of our sensory awareness, of our faculties?

A.
Oh yes, but that's due to the stage of society we now live in. We live in a society where technology is used to
diminish
human faculties. That is why I say this is an age of darkness. People are turning away from their faculties generally, not because of technology, but because of the head-set of the present society, the present exploitation-oriented culture in which goods are the measure of personal achievement, not the development of faculties. In ancient Ireland, during the period I was talking about earlier, we had a tremendous burst of artistic and intellectual expression. And the reason we had it is that people's honor was defined not by how many cows they had, or goats, or boar tusks, or gold coins; their honor depended on how well they could sing, how well they could produce poetry, how well they could make things of incredible beauty. It was those things that brought status. The arts of poetry and music became important because they were detached from goods.

Q.
What do you think is the relationship of Paganism and the Craft to the ecology movement?

A.
Paganism is the spirituality of the ecological movement, and the people's spirituality has always been a threat to the state.