The Yew Tree

A recent article in Touchstone (the organ of OBOD) suggested that all Pagans should move to the countryside, because we are a nature religion.  Apart from the obvious fact that if everyone moved to the countryside it would become over-populated, and hence too much like towns and cities, does this statement actually hold any water?

Classical ‘paganism’ existed in both cities and countryside.  In fact as Ronald Hutton points out in Triumph of the Moon: A history of modern Pagan witchcraft, there were many goddesses who were patrons of cities.  In addition, he points out, these city goddesses (also patrons of smithcraft, surveying, architecture, learning, and so on) would make excellent role-models for feminists, unlike the ‘Great Mother Goddess’ (invented by Jacquetta Hawkes, a conservative, and later enthusiastically adopted by feminists).

In fact, every ‘pagan’ culture has had cities and/or towns, from Çatalhöyük in Neolithic Turkey to the the Iron Age Celts.  And research into ritual suggests that with the widespread movement of people into cities, more ritual is practised, perhaps because the need to escape from the self becomes more pressing in a ‘civilised’ context (Durkheim (1912), The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, p220).

The reason that Paganism was revived was certainly because people felt they had lost their connection with Nature after the Industrial Revolution; and certainly ancient paganisms (or perhaps polytheism would be a better word in this context) involved propitiation of the gods of nature; but they also involved the Fates, Justice, and other ‘personifications’ of concepts we now regard as abstract, though doubtless the Norns or the Moerae were not seen as abstract by those who called upon them; and nor do I see them as abstract.

So connection with (or propitiation of) Nature is certainly an important part of Pagan practices; but it is not the whole story.  And Nature does not stop at the edge of the city; there are trees, animals and birds in the city.  Actually foxes prefer the city to the countryside because in urban contexts they are not pursued by the unspeakable who do not realise that they are uneatable.  The countryside is full of conservative people (in both the political and the social sense).  Try being a Pagan in the countryside for five minutes and see how long you would last.  I know a few people who have tried this and been rewarded by local suspicion and distrust; even if your chosen label does not include the word 'witch', country people will still assume that anyone practising the Old Religion is likely to put spells on them or their cattle.  If you want to be in a religious minority, opt for safety in numbers and a nice tolerant environment to do your thing in.  And, as Ronald Hutton further points out, the British countryside is not proper nature anyway, it is so heavily cultivated.  There is precious little actual wilderness left in Britain.

Rather than giving up on the cities, we should be trying to make them more beautiful, more sustainable, more elegant, and more civilised.  Cities have always been the places where innovation and change happen.  Cities were the birthplace of democracy, the middle classes, artisans, radical politics, libraries, and beautiful architecture.  (Well, it is possible that the first towns in some societies were created by the coming together of artisans to share ideas; and it is true that some radical political groups went to the countryside to try to realise their ideals, but you get the picture.)

I love visiting the countryside, and looking at the trees, birds and flowers, but I wouldn't want to live there.  I am very happy that there is a nature reserve within walking distance of our house, and that we can walk from our house out into the meadows beside the river Avon.  But it's also very useful to have a 24-hour supermarket nearby, and very pleasant to be able to pop into Bristol or Bath to the arts cinema or theatre.  Okay, so I am actually a suburban Pagan...  But the suburbs are very close to the ideal expressed by William Morris, in his utopian novel News from Nowhere, that every house should have a little plot of land to cultivate, and the towns should be full of trees and happy artisans plying their trade or craft.  When I had time, I used to cultivate an allotment, growing organic vegetables. The best thing would be to have biodegradable houses as well, like Celtic roundhouses.

As a polytheist, I honour spirits of place (also known as land wights and genii loci) and every kind of being up to and including gods and goddesses.  I'm also an animist, so I honour rocks and trees, too.  But artefacts can have soul, too.  Maybe even machines.  In Skinny Legs and All, a novel by Tom Robbins, five of the characters are inanimate objects (a spoon, a sock, a can of beans, a conch shell and a painted stick - the last two survived from ancient times and were originally objects of veneration in a Pagan temple).

Much of the modern yearning for Nature is due to our alienation from the industrialised urban world, and from machines.  But Pagans have taken to the web with alacrity, so we are clearly not averse to computers.  So it's not technology in itself that is the problem, it's our use of it (as with any tool or weapon – the sword can be a symbol of higher consciousness, truth and justice, or it can be a means of hacking someone to bits).

The problem with the modern world is our failure to connect.  We no longer see the connection between our desire to eat fresh fruit and vegetables all year round (whether they are in season or not) and the problems this might cause elsewhere in the world, for example, in terms of the pollution created by the aircraft that bring us the fruit and vegetables.  The causes and consequences of our behaviours have become so complex that they are incredibly difficult to unravel.  

So instead of putting increased pressure on the ever-diminishing countryside by moving there and creating a demand for additional infrastructure, why don't we try to make the cities a little greener?

Further comments on this article

Synesis: I do think that urban paganism must necessarily have two distinct parts. The first is about making city life ecologically sound. that is fairly simple, and not necessarily religious in itself, though I do think it is fairly central to what it means to be pagan. The other is engaging with urban spaces in a way that does not read them as intrusions upon nature but as a unique natural environment. Aside from the fact that it is very easy to see the survival of pagan cultures in much of our urban architecture, it is rather interesting to actually think about our environment. Wouldn't Zeus be very much at home in Trafalgar Square? Aphrodite Genetrix in Soho, certainly (I'm fairly sure I've seen her standing in one doorway or another). If Hekate isn't to be found in the crossroads outside the Palace Theatre, or Isis by the Thames, then I know I've been doing something wrong.

There is also an interesting way of using cities as initiatory theatres, interacting with both the people you meet (including drunks and tramps) and the objects you find. A map can easily be built of those places which are important to you, and journeying between them at a set time and using what you find can be quite the profound experience.

Yvonne: The problem as I see it is that the historical use of the term pagan is problematic, because classical paganisms were not exclusively rural; nor are modern paganisms. We cannot be 100% certain of what the term means, since the etymology is disputed. But as it was originally a derogatory term, meaning "those hicks from the sticks who aren't hip to the happening of Christianity" - which we have subsequently reclaimed as a label for our yearnings for the old gods and for the natural world - it can mean pretty much what you want.

The original point of the article was to have a go at a particularly self-righteous article by a druid, which claimed that you weren't a proper pagan unless you live in the countryside. As the city-dwelling "pagans" (I use inverted commas because the term hadn't been invented yet) of the past were devout followers of their gods, I daresay they'd be quite offended by the notion that they were somehow lacking in their devotions.