Review – Hidden Wisdom: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions by Richard Smoley and Jay Kinney

 Review – Hidden Wisdom: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions by Richard Smoley and Jay Kinney

I’ve been reading this book literally for years. It’s not very long or dense, but we picked it up for our Pagan Book Club back in the day. For some reason or another I was never able to finish it, until now. Aside from my 1-billion-year hiatus (I started it in July of 2011) from this book, I actually really adored it. Loved it, in fact. I’d recommend it to anyone!

Hidden Wisdom basically looks at many Western mystery traditions and offers a short survey of their history, basic beliefs, controversies, and mythology. The authors point out that in modern Western society, we often look to the East for our mysticism (India and China, mostly.) While they recognize that lots of great things have come from the East, they encourage Westerners to examine their own mystery traditions, too. There’s so much there to be proud of!

They also wanted to write a book to help people within the New Agey communities to understand the roots of the modern mystic movements. Smoley and Kinney did a great job of keeping their book on track with these goals, and because of this, I think it would be fabulous as a foundational or beginners book to those who are interested in Mysticism or the spiritual side of New Age thought or even Paganism. They really do a great job of laying out the basics, adding a lot of context and history that is otherwise missing from many New Age or Pagan resources.

http://www.jaykinney.com/

They introduce the book with a discussion about mysticism, mystic movements, and trends in mystic spirituality. Next they dive into some of the foundational roots of modern mysticism – Carl Jung, Gnosticism, Esoteric Christianity, Sufism, the Kabbalah, and Ceremonial Magic. They then move into Neo-Paganism and modern Shamanism. Things get really interesting when they start to introduce some of those mystic and New Age movements that were quiet influential, but perhaps not well-known. I personally loved reading about Hermeticism and Alchemy, G. I. Gardjieff, and Secret Societies.

All of these movements have been incredibly influential on modern mystic thought. I personally knew a bit about most (but not all!) of the chapters. Through spanning so many topics, there’s something in Hidden Wisdom for everyone. Those chapters that were familiar topics to me (Gnosticism, Jung, Neo-Paganism) offered a great review and refresher. When it came to the chapters on Ceremonial Magic, G. I. Gardjieff, and Hermeticism, I found every word and concept to be fascinating. These thoughts were totally new to me, and it was great to read about something that I’d never heard of before.

Smoley and Kinney did a great job of offering lots of information without bogging the book down. And while I’m sure they missed some key ideas here or there, I didn’t feel like anything vital was lacking. There’s just enough to get the general idea and to gain an appreciation of the topics being discussed. Furthermore, each section has quite an extensive list of sources and resources, which is quiet excellent for those who would like to learn more about a specific topic.

http://www.innerchristianity.com/

As a minister, I’d recommend this book for those who don’t understand where I personally come from spiritually. I have a heavily Gnostic foundation to my outlook on mystical matters, and this has been confusing for some people. Hidden Wisdom would be a great book to clear up some of the confusion, without overwhelming someone with Gnostic dogma (for any Gnostic who is reading this, it made me laugh to type out the words “Gnostic Dogma.”)

As a Neo-Pagan Priestess, I’d love to use this book with people who I am mentoring. While most of the mentoring I’ve done has been basic Pagan 101 stuff, this book would be a good one to explain the more mystic and spiritual aspects of where Neo-Pagans are coming from. Furthermore, it offers a very good history of the roots of modern Neo-Paganism. We’re not just modified Wicca. We have roots in all of these mystery traditions – in the philosophies of Jung, in the ideals of Gardjieff, in the dreams of the Alchemists. And yes, we even have very clear connections to Gnosticism and Mystic Christianity.

So, I pretty much loved this book. I’m a little embarrassed that it took me so long to read, but that’s my fault, and not the fault of Smoley or Kinney.

Pagan Blog Project - Week 13 - G#1 – Gnostics

a repost from PBP 2013

Pagan Blog Project - Week 13 - G#1 – Gnostics
 

What we know about the ancient Gnostics is that we don’t know much. We know that the people who modern people might call Gnostic never called themselves Gnostic. The word Gnostic might have even been used as a slang. (Kind of like how the people who modern people call Pagan never ever called themselves Pagan.)

Plotinus, who is considered by many modern people to be a premier writer of Gnostic source materials, often wrote about the Gnostics as those goofy radicals down the street. "It is NOT as the Gnostics say..." (Kind of like how modern Pagans often write about “those fluff bunnies”, even though two thousand years ago we might all be seen as fluff bunnies.)

In regards to the Gnostics, we don’t know more than we know. But what I’ve learned about the Gnostics is that they’ve always been misunderstood. We don’t know who they are now and no one knew who they were then. Which translates to me that anything can be Gnostic, nothing is Gnostic, nothing is not-Gnostic. (Which works out really great for me.)

We know that the Sethians in Egypt were considered to be the first Gnostics, about 200 years or so before Christianity. These people were a sect of radical Jews who were probably inspired by Mediterranean (Greek) mystery traditions. And these Mediterranean mystery traditions were probably inspired by the Ancient Egyptian mystery traditions, which were inspired by God Only Knows. But whoever the Gnostics were, they went on to inspire Christianity, the Kabbalah, Masons, The Golden Dawn, Wiccans, modern Pagans, comic book artists, rock songs, books, movies, and a continuing cycle of inspired texts and prophets (Dick, Hesse, Moore, Smashing Pumpkins, ELO, etc.)

What I love about the early Gnostics was that they just wrote stuff all the time, and some of it is crazy. I get the impression that if there is was aspect about their current Gnostic myth that they didn’t like, they just wrote their own. So this means as a modern person reading this stuff it seems confusing and contradictory, but contradiction only need to exist in religion if one is looking at religion from a literal point of view. But when looking at religion as something that is organic, changeable, and evolving, the Gnostic myths make perfect sense, especially from a Universalist point of view.  We’re all on a path towards God, we know that each path is different. We’re all just wandering around on a crooked path and at the center is God. 

So who were the Gnostics and what did they do? We don’t really know. But what I like to think is that two thousand years ago, Gnostics, Jews, Pagans, Christians, atheists, agnostics and whoever else got together in comfy backrooms every once in a while. I’d like to think that they were all friends. That they sat and breathed together, wrote stupid stories about talking snakes and laughing gods, chanted, raised energy, talked about God, shared wine and bread, laughed, told jokes, had ecstatic moments, and afterword, in the words of my Bishop, they sat around in joy and said “how cool was that?!”

Pagan Blog Project – week 7 - D#1 – “TO DARE”

our Lady Liberty, plus tobacco leaf

Pagan Blog Project – week 7 - D#1 – “TO DARE”

My Druids and I (and my sister and a classmate and 25K others) attended the HKonJMarch in Raleigh, North Carolina this past Saturday. According to the website, “In 2006, the Historic Thousands on Jones St. (HKonJ) People's Assembly Coalition was formed under the leadership of Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II and the North Carolina NAACP. It has grown to include over 150 coalition partners.” 

Throughout the day I was trying to explain to my sister why we were marching and it was hard to narrow down the list. Civil rights, voter’s rights, women’s health, immigration reform, safe food and water, anti-fracking, water rights, teacher’ssalaries, LGBTQA rights… and those are just a few. Basically, if you’re a resident of North Carolina, there’s something politically going on to screw you over.

This past summer the NAACP and their coalition hosted Moral Monday protests and marches, and one of my Druids and I attended as many as we could. We quickly became disillusioned with the uber-Christian rhetoric, and really, we’re not at all the type of people to be offended willy-nilly by Christian-centric stuff. One Unitarian Universalist minister mentioned “Earth Religion” once, which was nice and better than nothing, but really doesn’t represent either of us.

My Druids write great liturgy and rituals, so they put together a really wonderful little ritual for us to do before the event every Monday down at the capitol building. We called upon Gods and Goddesses of justice, as well as what my Druids call the American Triad – Liberty, Justice, and Columbia. As Pagans and Polytheists we wanted to be represented. We wanted to be included as clergy. We wanted to include our prayers and our voices to the thousands and thousands of people who have been protesting here in North Carolina. This is our state, too, and we want to move forward together with our brothers and sisters and Others of various faiths and backgrounds.

"If you sing for the river, the river will sing."

(Not to mention our responsibility to our Gods and Ancestors and Nature Spirits and Others. Some of these ask or even require us to engage in our communities and in social justice, and how can we tell Them "no"?)

We DARED.

The three of us right now are able to be pretty much out of the Broom Closet, which gives us certain liberties that other Pagans are not so fortunate to enjoy. Even being able to march in these Moral Monday events might be risky for some in NC (especially state employees) but to march openly and out as a Pagan might be seen as some as even more risky.

But as we try to come together in the spirit of Community and Service, we decided that it was our job to not only attend Marches, but to be at the Marches as openly Neo-Pagan and Polytheist. Because maybe there are other Pagans out there who want to know that others are marching with them. Or maybe we want some prayers that refer to more than “Mother Earth” (who is great, don’t get me wrong.)

So I bought a scarf and decided to use it as a stole. Unfortunately the only pattern I could find was with a pentacle, which represents me (a Neo-Wiccan) but not my Druids (who are members of ADF) but I figured it was start. But we gathered together to do our little ritual at the capital I found myself hiding my scarf once, when a clergyman came upon us, clearly lost (he was looking for a prayer group.) Urgh. Why was I lacking courage? But he smiled, asked us “Oh, are you Neo-Pagans?” and made small talk and was delightful.

The ritual was lovely. Just perfect. Macte esto!

"Close prisons, fund schools"

While we marched I decided to throw my shoulders back, lift my head high, and proudly display my pentacles. I was there as Pagan Clergy. I was there with my friends and comrades-in-arms. I was there as a community leader of the local Pagan community. If I couldn’t face a few dirty looks or questioning stares, then how could I expect others to be faced with the same reaction? Because sure, I’ve been out, but not quite like this…

But at one point, when the super cute Jewish man and his partner turned to us randomly and said “BLESSED BE” I was a little struck. I mumbled my gratitude, but then he told me how he wanted to say it earlier to me but had lost me in the crowd, but was happy he found me again. So I smiled graciously and told him “you as well!”. And I meant it. I hope he and his lovely partner are the most blessed.

And later, a lady came up with a petition about fracking, and she said “oh, you’re Wiccan!” and she told me about the Chapel she is part of in a little town a few hours away, and she was excited to hear about our projects and our networking efforts for this part of North Carolina, and we shared fliers and names and parted ways with a smile.

And these are interactions that would not have taken place at all if I had not DARED.

One website says:

"Middle class over millionaires"

“TO DARE can be interpreted as to have the courage we need to grow. By daring ourselves to step out of our comfort zone, to be something that people see as "other," we are in fact fulfilling our own need "to dare." We are facing that which is unknown, moving into a realm that is far outside what we're used to.”

So as I engage in social activism, community networking, and continue to step into Pagan leadership roles in the community, I realize that I must continue TO DARE. I need to grow. I need to step out of my comfort zone. I need to realize that even though I might get a few confused looks out in public, that’s okay, because I can be out and I owe it to my community to present Paganism with grace and wisdom and love. I may be facing the unknown, but I’m not alone. I have my Druids, and my sister, and that lovely Gay Jewish man, and that sweet lady, and thousands and thousands of others who, in their own way, also dare TO DARE.