{"id":1639,"date":"2010-05-25T09:55:08","date_gmt":"2010-05-25T15:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1639"},"modified":"2010-05-25T15:04:40","modified_gmt":"2010-05-25T21:04:40","slug":"in-which-i-am-not-the-expert-after-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1639","title":{"rendered":"In which I am not the expert after all"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, a university student in Australia copied me on an email to an American Heathen reconstructionist:<\/p>\n

Hail! I sent the following to [name] seeking advice; perhaps you could offer some advice as well?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It was about wishing to set up an Australian branch of the group, but the writer had some reservations:<\/p>\n

I am indelibly Australian, and there are qualitative differences between the psycho-spiritual make-up of Australian people \u2013 not to mention distinct political and social predispositions \u2013 and that of other folk from far away. Perhaps to a singular degree in the Australian case, these different requirements and tendencies are an outgrowth of not only our historical experience, similar in some senses to America, but our unique climate and geography as well<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

All interesting questions. There seems to be some tension in reconstructionist groups between adapting to the present and Doing It Like The Ancestors Did, not to mention Dressing Like The Ancestors.<\/p>\n

True, sometimes we go backwards in order to go forwards. (Ernst Kris, a Freudian psychologist, wrote of “regression in service of the ego”\u2014a non-rational dip into the unconscious in the service of creativity.)\u00a0 The weakness of the reconstructionist impulse is the need to find an ancient warrant or precedent for everything.<\/p>\n

That way lies stagnation.<\/p>\n

I was more impressed by a comment someone once made on the Julian Society <\/a>listserv, which can be paraphrased as follows: How would the old Pagan religion(s) look if it\/they never had been interrupted by Christianity?<\/em><\/p>\n

Now there is a thought experiment!<\/p>\n

If you look at ancient Rome, there was no one Pagan religion\u2014and there were non-theistic philosophical schools, like the Epicureans<\/a>, as well.\u00a0 But you had everything from the simplest household cults to the most abstractly intellectual Platonic teaching. What would have prevailed?<\/p>\n

My thought is that there would not be the distinctions we make between “religion,” “art,” “science,” and so forth, with people declaring allegiance to one but not the other, but rather much more interpenetration of all these realms.<\/p>\n

I suggested that thought experiment to the Australian. He wrote back:<\/p>\n

I do appreciate your response; however, I mixed your email with someone else’s during the sending process.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So much for being an international expert. Instead, you get this blog post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, a university student in Australia copied me on an email to an American Heathen reconstructionist: Hail! I sent the following to [name] seeking advice; perhaps you could offer some advice as well? It was about wishing to set up an Australian branch of the group, but the writer had some reservations: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-1639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-paganism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-qr","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":14146,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14146","url_meta":{"origin":1639,"position":0},"title":"All Those Witches: Caroline Tully Sorts Them Out","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 4, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"\/ Caroline Tully, Pomegranate associate editor and long-time denizen of the Australian Pagan scene, gots onto an Australian podcast,The Briefing, as Witch-with-a-PhD to sort of in a very short time the difference between Wiccan witches, Etsy witches, and the rest of the social media witch-fauna. Released on Halloween 2025, of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Australia\"","block_context":{"text":"Australia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=australia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":239,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=239","url_meta":{"origin":1639,"position":1},"title":"Australian nanny state-ism? Let's see,\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 3, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Australian nanny state-ism? Let's see, we have ... 1. A security guard licensed to carry a pistol, who is ... 2. Supposed to protect US $21,000 at a hotel from ... 3. An armed robber who who inflicts on her \" a fractured skull, a broken nose and left hand,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":558,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=558","url_meta":{"origin":1639,"position":2},"title":"Under Southern Skies","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 13, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Doug Ezzy, sociologist and co-editor of Researching Paganisms also edited an anthology by \"Down Under\" Witches called Practising the Witch's Craft: Real Magic Under a Southern Sky. He writes to say that it is now available from Amazon for the rest of the world. It ranges from Gardnerians to Goddess\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Australia\"","block_context":{"text":"Australia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=australia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11329,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11329","url_meta":{"origin":1639,"position":3},"title":"The Most Paleo-Pagan Tale Ever Told?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 22, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Thanks to the Witches' Voice Facebook page and other sources, I have been hearing about an ancient Australian story, of \"an ancestral creator-being transformed into the fiery volcano, Budj Bim. Almost 40,000 years later, new scientific evidence suggests this long-shared legend of the Dreaming could be much more than a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Australia\"","block_context":{"text":"Australia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=australia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":26,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=26","url_meta":{"origin":1639,"position":4},"title":"Australian "nature religion" grows","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 15, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"And in Australia, self-identified followers of nature religion grew 140 percent between 1996 and 2001, say census officials.","rel":"","context":"In \"Australia\"","block_context":{"text":"Australia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=australia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":693,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=693","url_meta":{"origin":1639,"position":5},"title":""Dark Paganism and Deep Blue Religion"","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 26, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Doug Ezzy's \"Spirit of Things\" Australian radio interview, \"Dark Paganism and Deep Blue Religion,\" is now available for online listening or download.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1639"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1642,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639\/revisions\/1642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}