Jason Pitzl-Waters tipped his readership off to an article on the Grievous Angel blog that suggests modern pagans look to house music as a source of expression of our energies. GA considers it a more appropriate form for at least his own expression of faith than the usual folk, Goth or rock music. A lot of GA’s point is how Dionysian disco and its descendants are, a mood far closer to his own experience of paganism than that provided by the aforementioned genres.
In my own life, I work with ecstatic practices. I am deeply aware of how a driving beat can help pull you out of your logical brain and into a deeper communion with spirit in whatever form you're reaching for. It also leads me to appreciate the times when I'm not swimming in a Dionysian river. I want my rituals to be in touch with spirit. But I don't always want to be overwhelmed by it. So, while I do like the idea of house music as a pagan form, I don't see it as the pagan form. I think there's plenty of room for more, just as there's room for both group and individual ritual, trance work and feasts. Think of it as an adjunct to the "many roads, one mountain" concept for religions, only there are many mountains. Different music takes you different places, and there are lots of good places to go. Only approaching your faith on one vector leads to stultification if you're too rigid and chaos if you're not careful. I know a lot of pagans rejected the faiths of their childhoods because it felt too restrictive. It is always possible to run too far the other direction.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment