The Dark Inside of Me, I'm Gonna Let It Grow

Or Stop Saying "Shadow Work," ffs

 

 

Somewhere I have a mimeographed copy of Starhawk's first ever sermon to the Pagan communities of America to stop using "white light" as a spell for healing and empowerment.  Basically, stop using "white" to mean good, and "dark" to mean bad, she insisted.  This was back when Reclaiming was a real, paper, Xeroxed newsletter, and I had complained about using "masculine" and "feminine" energy as synonymous for sex role stereotypes in one issue around 1985.  

Of course, white people didn't listen then, and in general, as racism permeates forms of European descent paganism, white people are busy fighting Nazi appropriation and forgetting small language changes.  This is what rightwing and fascist organizing is always about, btw: forcing progressives and socialists from important work in our communities to endlessly battling the brown shirts of various conservative and rightwing groups.  Yes, do keep fighting against white supremacists appropriating European paganism.  

But we still need to think about and remember language.  20 years ago I sang a version of "This Little Light of Mine" at a Unitarian Universalist church in a sermon about multiracial families challenging racist norms.  I proposed this version I used in my years of teaching daycare and preschool:

"The Dark inside of me, I'm gonna let it grow,

The Dark inside of me, I'm gonna let it grow.

The Dark inside of me, I'm gonna let it grow,

Let it grow, let it grow, let it grow."

The reason Starhawk, me, and many anti-racism activists,including Aradhna Krishna and Cord Whitaker,  have called for this language change - for about 50 years -  is because the endless equation of darkness, shadows, blackness, brownness, and night with evil, badness, difficulty, challenges, hardship and ugliness is a deep-rooted form of European racism.  It came into Europe with the Indo-Europeans: ya know, those conquering patriarchs who wiped out the thousands year old Goddess and dark worhsipping civilizations that preceded and which archaeologist Marija Gimbutas worked her entire life to uncover and teach.  Gimbutas' work has been confirmed recently by genetic sequencing; when the Indo-Europeans invaded continental Europe, sweeping away matriarchies that had lasted millennia, they also wiped out the Y DNA of the indigenous peoples, possibly by genocide.  And they brought their sky God and their hate for darkness, women, children, earth, and life itself.  We are still dismantling their legacies that European descent peoples like my family have spread worldwide.

Part of paganism for modern pagans concerned with reclaiming any European indigenous religion, part of addressing social justice and racism for anyone concerned with equality and equity, and part of being an ally or traitor for people of color demands we dismantle racism.  So 40 years ago Starhawk admonished us to quit saying "white light," and also to quit with portrayals of "the" Goddess or any Goddess as blonde, buxom women from Victorian imagery.  

 And that means we stop using Shadow Work as a metaphor for addressing our experiences of trauma, abuse, poor parenting, triggers, or anything else from the psychological work of the (very racist) Carl Jung.   I am seeing too many Instagram posts about "shadow work," and calling for witches to do their "shadow work."  The idea is often to encourage healing for people, which is kinda nice.  But naming trauma, triggers, difficulties and challenges as "shadowy" is just simply racist.

We as pagans and committed allies and justice seekers ourselves, must dismantle racism in our pagan practice.  We have to stop with the buxom Goddesses, the blonde worshiping, and the racist language.  Paganism is rooted in the country in it's very meaning.  Country is soil and woodlands; country is seeds and fertility and fallow times and death; country is dark nights and dreamtime.  We need to reclaim the dark from those distant genocidal Indo-Europeans, and we need to reclaim the dark to see the totality of the beauty of life and living and dying on our threatened planet.  

The dark, the shadows, the night, are all beautiful.  We come from the darkness of our mother's wombs, and we live off the bounty of the darkness of soil and seeds and roots deep in the earth.  Night is for rest, for hunting, for growth, for seeing differently.  Shadows are nourishing havens in summer and protection for plants and species needing a different light.  My shadow garden is as beautiful as my sun garden.  Shadows whisper to me when I search for my ancestors, and shadows call for coolness and succor.  The shadows aren't places we address difficulty or hardship.  The shadows are places of growth and beauty and haven.

So if you want to do to emotional work with intergenerational trauma, with experiences of oppression and trauma, with patterns of behavior we hope to change and address, we need to use language that is inclusive of all people and our whole earth.  Naming is essential in feminist witchcraft, it is essential in feminist and anti-racist activism, and it is essential in healing.  

So name your work with truth.  With power.  "I'm working on intergenerational trauma."  "I'm working on addressing behaviors I learned due to violence in my life." "I'm trying to dismantle the oppressive language I learned growing up."  "I'm trying to learn new ways of being present to the people in my life."  "I'm working on new ways to set boundaries."  This is consciousness work.  It is old fashioned consciousness raising.  It is community and political work.   Name it. Name it. Name it.  

Because in naming we reclaim the dark in ourselves, the stuff several millennia of violence has tried to erase:  females of all color, men of color, children, communities and nations of color, the earth, the land, animals, our homes.  Letting those parts of the world grow is essential to the planet.  We need women of all colors; we need men of color; we need forests and soil and land and children and community.  

Fuck yes, let them grow.  Let darkness grow.

Some resources:

How did white become the metaphor for all good things?

Is saying "dark" to mean "bad" an offensive, racist metaphor? 

Epiphanies and Coups

 I woke today, the last day of Christmas, epiphany, the day of recognition.  The news from the Georgia election was the greatest; I posted on my personal Facebook that today was the best epiphany ever.  

Well.  

What a day.

Epiphany has many meanings.  Someone can have a personal epiphany, realizing an important fact or feeling or event.  A friend had an epiphany that she wanted to study nursing.  This recognition/realization changes her life as she looks to enroll in college.  

Epiphanies can be religious.  We recognize the divinity of a baby (or all babies).  Three wise men recognize the future leadership of a baby (or all babies).  Epiphany is January 6th, the last day of Christmas, the day the Magi arrive at the manger where Mary cares for Jesus.  In many cultures, today is the gifting day.  Last night Befana flew in Italy, distributing gifts to the good keepers of Christmas.  In Ireland, Epiphany was the Nollaig na mBan, Women's little Christmas.  Women got together and children buy gifts for their moms and grannies.  Pubs are all female on Epiphany to this day in Western Ireland.  (A great tradition...)

Epiphanies are also political.  Taking back the Senate seemed this morning to be the most fitting Epiphany gift.

And now.  A bunch of Trump rioters took over the US Capital while Capital Hill police took selfies with them in the Rotunda, and DC riot police (not to mention MD and VA riot police) somehow took three hours to arrive and expel them.  Having marched in DC - twice with a million other marchers - I can tell you that when the LGBT community or moms against guns show up in DC we are met with far more force.  But still, the failed and ridiculous coup was an epiphany for many Americans, especially white Americans who have wobbled on Trump these past four years, wanting his followers' votes and not wanting to protest his support of fascists and KKK.  A West Virginia state senator wrote that this lame coup was a disgrace on the day of Epiphany, Christ's revelation.  I responded that the real epiphany is that Republicans are traitors.  Yay me.

Yet walking tonight and enjoying the last evening of Christmas lights, I return to my own political epiphany.  Two wonderful Democrats are now the elected Senators for Georgia, until recently one of the most segregated states in America, and one of the most historically activist states in suppressing minority voters. Today's election goes to Stacey Abrams and the organization Mijente, who spent years slowly building up a coalition to overcome Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression (remember those 10 hour lines back in November?  those were no mistake, and are the real voter fraud of 2020).

You have to go back to 1980, though,  to appreciate today.  I and my first husband were active trying to push the DNC to address the active Republican suppression of Black voters throughout the US south.  The National Democrats refused to do so, which helped oust Jimmy Carter and ushered in Ronald Reagan.  Remember the 1980's pandemic?  I watched my neighbors die of AIDS thanks to all the failures from that time.  

Stacey Abrams, however, recognized the voter suppression in her home state, and her epiphany led her to overcoming election defeats and to build a network that fought the suppression that defeated her.  Remember, Epiphanies can be personal, political, and religious.  Abrams build Fair Fight Action in 2018, and two years later she delivered Georgia to the Democratic Party that abandoned her and all people of color forty years before.  Watching tonight's Christmas lights, the senate elections feel pretty deeply faithful.  It will be up to US activists to demand that Democrats live up to the gift they were given:  we need an agenda that addresses all communities, especially communities of color, oppressed communities, and fighting communities.  A bunch of camouflage dressed, middle aged idiots marching through the Capital can't stop us.  

So.  Epiphany.  Revelation.  What will tomorrow uncover and show us about our own lives, about our own powers, about faith and believing even when tomorrow seems unfathomable?  Believing that epiphanies will come requires a lot of faith.  I voted socialist in 1980; Abrams lost the governorship in 2018.  Yet we must grab epiphany, grab revelation, grab recognition of our power to build again and again.  

We are the real coup.

Merry Last Day of Christmas.