DISKUS Volume 6 (2000) http://www.uni-marburg.de/fb03/religionswissenschaft/journal/diskus HEAL THE UNIVERSE AND HEAL THE SELF: BATESON'S DOUBLE-BIND AND NORTH AMERICAN WICCAN PRACTICE Shelley Tsivia Rabinovitch Ph.D. student, Department of Religious Studies and Classics, University of Ottawa, Canada Email: tsivia@uottawa.ca ----------------- ABSTRACT Research among Pagans in Canada clarifies the broad understanding that Paganism is understood as a religion of self-empowerment offering resources for healing and relating. Here, magic is a metaphor for change rather than a particular group of actions performed to achieve specific goals. A startling discovery of the prevalence of abuse in the upbringing of those who have become (or self-identified as) Pagans gives urgency to this paper's exploration of meanings and methods of healing. Choice, power, and the sacredness of life are central to this identity. ----------------- During the summer of 1991, I had the chance to travel across Canada in order to find out who Canadian Neo-Pagans and Wiccans were and what they believed. This quest was originally intended to discover common forms of axiology and cosmology, but turned up some unexpected data. Although I found no correlations in the obvious questions such as family ethnicity or religion of origin, I did find some startling relationships in the individual backgrounds of those who call themselves Neo-Pagan in Canada. I later discovered most of these qualities were also shared by the American Neo-Pagans with whom I have had occasion to discuss my research. I cannot directly apply my information on the British Neo-Pagan and Wiccan communities as I have done no research there. However, I did find it interesting that, during a telephone conversation with a long-standing member of England's Wiccan community, she indicated she could identify with my findings. What I will attempt to achieve in this paper is to look at these attributes common to so many North American Neo-Pagans, and investigate how they influence their forms of religious practice. MAGICAL WILL: A NEO-PAGAN METAPHOR FOR HEALING Virtually all Neo-Pagans utilize Will in much of their activities, both in ritual and outside of it. However, efforts to define Neo-Pagan use of Will as magic in sociological and anthropological terms becomes as difficult as defining Canadian Neo-Pagan Witches as anthropological witches <1>: what is occurring is different (Luhrmann, 1989). To the Neo-Pagan practitioner, magic is a metaphor (Adler, 1986; Farrar and Farrar, 1981, 1984; Starhawk, 1987). Very few Neo-Pagans directly believe that sympathetic magic works in a direct one-to-one relationship, as their identity differs from the tribal identity referred to in much of the literature on Magic and magical thinking (Bernard, 1927; Lewis, 1964; Shotwell, 1910; Wax and Wax, 1962). For Neo-Pagan practitioners, magic is the metaphor for empowerment in their lives. Mircea Eliade (1976, 65) attributes the sudden rise in Occult activities as an "optimistic evaluation of the human mode of being", and it is this optimism, this self-empowerment, which is the focus of Neo-Pagan magical pursuits. Neo-Paganism is a religious philosophy of experience rather than doctrine. Nearly all Neo-Pagan practitioners of magic indicate they do magic (spellworking in the interviews) for others, and usually in some form of beneficent healing. Neo-Pagans heal others with the same tool as they heal themselves: Will. Houseblessings, love spells, job spells, and student spells are all aimed at creating an atmosphere of wholeness. The practitioner is healing self and the world around her/him in this manner. Learning to exercise Will and believe in the Self aids the Neo-Pagan to achieve balance and learn skills which upbringing might have neglected. It is no accident that the number one type of magic practised by Canadian Neo-Pagans is that of healing: by herbal tisanes, hands-on techniques (such as Reiki or "energy flow" redirection), and peer-counselling. Magical practice to the Canadian Neo-Pagan is not viewed as a direct cause/effect relationship to change and harm the surroundings. In opposition to this view, Neo-Pagan magical practice is to effect change, using the Self (individual) as the medium rather than through an organizationally-sanctioned medium (e.g. priest, prayer). Neo-Pagan magic takes on many diverse forms but is primarily a personal action, empowering the identity of the individual and his/her sense of being a healthy whole player in the world around him/her <2>. The popular literature on Witchcraft and Neo-Pagan belief puts a high level of stress on magic in daily life. Witchcraft and Neo-Paganism as religious forms use magic (as a form of concentration and positive imagery) in many roles. FAMILY OF ORIGIN AND DYSFUNCTIONAL EPISODES There is a large body of research in both psychology and sociology on conversion factors, and why individuals tend to be drawn to one religion over another. Curious as to possible links between the high stress on holistic beliefs, healing practices, and some sort of deprivation in the practitioner's own past, the final section of my interview was formulated. The intent was to see if any link between family or upbringing might sway these individuals towards Neo-Paganism as an adult religion of choice. The final page of the interview was termed "delicate questions". The questions were drawn heavily from psychological literature, dealing with family of origin questions which probed the personal history of the participant. This group of questions dealt with substance abuse among care-givers, along with sexual, emotional, and physical abuse. The results were startling. ABUSIVE UPBRINGING The most surprising information gained from the interviews dealt with families of origin. Although a small minority of Witches (10 out of 67) grew up in and out of foster homes or boarding schools, most lived in some version of the nuclear family. What was distressing was the abuse to which these individuals were subjected while growing up, both within the family and without. The frequency of abuse was so high and in some cases so violent that I had to modify one question in the last section of the survey. Initially the question "Would you call your childhood typical", was answered by numerous women, "yes it was typical - I was physically and sexually abused hundreds of times". A modifier, "as in, Beaver Cleaver 1950s typical" (referring to a wholesome, squeaky clean character in a very popular North American T.V. show) had to be added. Of the 40 women interviewed, only 2.5 percent did not undergo some sort of severe trauma as they grew up (one out of 40). Two years after my initial research, my single anomaly had her world turned upside down by remembering a sequence of violent sexual abuses perpetrated by her paternal grandfather. This sequence of abuse was verified by her younger sister, who had also been victimized. Of the 27 men interviewed, only 22 percent did not undergo similar experiences (seven out of 27). Two factors were investigated when determining dysfunctional upbringing: firstly, alcoholic parent(s) or drug dependency, and secondly, physical, sexual, or emotional abuse (severe) by a family member or an outsider in a position of control <3>. Of those reporting some form of abuse, 29 indicated one or more of their parents were substance-dependent, 46 reported they had been victims of abuse (either as a child or an adult), and 22 were victims of incest by a blood relative or a step-relative <4>. When abuse was reported, I was very careful to get the informant to elaborate unless they were too uncomfortable to do so. It was made quite clear that the level of 'spanking' considered 'usual' in the 1950s and 1960s was not considered physical abuse. The stories which emerged were no less than hair-raising. In order to assure the reader that these are not skewed figures, some examples of actual interviews follow: "Both my parents were severely emotionally abusive... and at age 12 or 13 I had both oral and anal sex with a much older boy, a friend of our family. The whole incident was denied by my family when I told, and so it occurred for months... Since no one believed me and no one told me it was bad or evil, I began to perform sodomy/oral sex on other boys, down to 6 or 7 yrs of age, including a young "cousin" [friend of the family]... I have attempted suicide three times in 4 yrs." (male, Nova Scotia). "I had a really emotionally abusive family, and my mother tried to commit suicide many times... My sister was a sexual abuser, and my dad was an alcoholic." (female, Nova Scotia). (laughing) "Yeah, I got it all and I'm not afraid to talk about it: physical, emotional, sexual abuse. My mother was addicted to prescription drugs. ...With my father there was touching, and genital sex. He did it frequently between when I was, ah... 6 and about 12... I was raped too as an adult, and I was battered by my spouse." (female, Winnipeg). "I underwent physical abuse as I grew up. My stepfather broke my neck when I was 15, he was a schizophrenic alcoholic... I suffered through both emotional abuse, and sexual abuse. I was 12 and my mother's third husband was 45 years old, he kept raping me... Both my mother and step dad are alcoholic, then my mother got off booze and switched into valium addiction... The abuse I went through gave me the strength to be a Witch... I guess I'm tempered steel." (female, Winnipeg). "Yes, my childhood was violent. I was a ward of the province, was sent to boarding schools, and at times was raised by other relatives. My father raped me numerous times over a few years... I underwent a lot of emotional abuse from my mother who tried to convince me I was crazy when I said what my father had done... They sent me to a hospital after I told, to see what was wrong with this otherwise lovely child that she would make up such stories... My father was an alcoholic, and my mother was hooked on tranquilizers... My father firmly believed he was doing the Lord's work. He had a strange view of God. [when he sexually abused the informant]. As an adult I was raped at 26... and was not battered but was emotionally abused by a lover..." (female, Calgary). "Well you know, I survived the British boarding school system... My parents were inept, but not emotionally abusive... At boarding school I guess I was sexually abused... I was forcibly masturbated by older boys, things like that..." (male, Victoria). "I underwent severe physical abuse. Because all the work was left to me because my mother was not well, I was beaten if the house was not up to scratch...There was also emotional abuse ...For instance, I was caught reading in bed late... and as punishment my mother took away all the light bulbs from my room for TWO YEARS...I was a victim of child sexual abuse from my step-grandfather [molesting, touching around ages from 6 to 9]." (female, Victoria). It is important to note that the abuse did not necessarily originate in the family itself. However, the abuse was NOT just a single occurrence. As an example, Faren Ravenwing of Halifax recounted how a group of locals from one city in Nova Scotia tried her as a witch and decided she should be burned. In 1972 Ravenwing was lured by a group of six adults to a deserted beach where she was tried "in the name of the Roman Catholic Church." According to Ravenwing, she was accused of "sacrificing infants, blighting crops, interfering with livestock, casting the evil eye, causing illness and death, ensorcelling men," and so forth. After she was convicted by this "trial", Ravenwing escaped her captors before they were able to tie her to a wooden chair and burn her. When she returned to the city in 1981, she was warned to leave within six months or "someone would be hired to shoot me." (Ravenwing is from a community in Nova Scotia of approximately 8,000 inhabitants. In 1992 she was 35 years old.) BATESON'S WORK: THE DOUBLE-BIND THEORY It appears these individuals found themselves in what author Gregory Bateson calls the "double-bind". The following outline of the double-bind situation is from Bateson (1972) and was originally published as a paper in 1956. The necessary ingredients for a double bind situation are: 1) Two or more persons, one being the victim. Other players can include the mother and/or father and or siblings. 2) Repeated experience, such that the contradictory information creates a habitual expectation. 3) A primary negative injunction, which can be in one of two forms: (a) Do not do so and so, or I will punish you," or (b) If you do not do so and so, I will punish you". The main focus here is learning which is based on AVOIDANCE of punishment rather than by reward seeking. 4) A second injunction conflicting with the first at a more abstract level, and like the first enforced by punishments or signals which threaten survival. This second injunction can be subtle, and conveyed through body language or actions rather than in words. 5) Some sort of injunction which prohibits the victim from escaping from the field. (In other words, the situation of directly opposing messages CANNOT be in any way avoided by the victim.) Bateson's double-bind theory explains why a disturbed mind starts to lose its ability to discriminate between the LITERAL and METAPHORIC world. When the ability to distinguish between literal and metaphoric is completely lost, a schizophrenic break occurs. To me as a researcher, the interesting fact is that Neo-Pagans in North America face double-binds in their formative years and yet they do not become schizophrenic. Instead, they seem to start a long process of empowerment on both the metaphoric AND literal levels. On one hand, abuse and/or alcoholic parenting left the child with a sense that they could never be good enough, or competent enough. Very poor self-esteem is a standard effect of an abusive upbringing. As well, many Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOAs) find themselves trying to "fix things", either because of parental pressures or because of internal ones. When they find out they cannot fix the unfixable, they internalize the blame and again suffer the feeling of being not good enough. From the other direction is the message being sent by the 'peer group' as they grew up: that the individual is too good, too brainy, and somehow above the others (therefore somehow worthy of ridicule). Most of the people interviewed had turned inside themselves at a young age, becoming voracious readers. Numerous Neo-Pagans told of having read a complete encyclopedia 'just for the sheer pleasure of it'. This withdrawal from the day to day world was a response to the abusive upbringing. When the "real" world was a bad or scary place to live, the child turned to other places: fantasy (e.g. the arts, and creative expression) or logic (e.g. sciences, where the world has order and rules). Bright children are often teased, ostracized, and bullied, and this is the other side of the double-bind most Neo-Pagans in Canada found themselves in. From the family or other abuser came the message, "you aren't GOOD (obedient, pretty, subservient, etc.) ENOUGH and this is why I do this to you." From the classmates and other children in the neighbourhood, the victim gets the message "you're TOO GOOD (brainy, pretty, 'teacher's pet') and this is why we do this to you (e.g. ostracize, beat up)." The victimized child retreats further into him/herself, building more walls between the painful outside world and themselves. Nearly ALL the Canadian Neo-Pagans I interviewed indicated they were loners through their school years, usually NOT by choice, and that they felt that Neo-Paganism had lessened that feeling of being alone. POWER: A RELIGION GROWS As has been illustrated graphically, a very high percentage of those choosing Neo-Pagan religious expression in North America share common experiences as children: physical, sexual and emotional abuse, often coupled with the status of being ACOAs (Adult Children of Alcoholics). As one investigates the structures of various Neo-Pagan traditions one sees where Neo-Pagan individuals may be subconsciously striving to reclaim what they lost in their childhoods: power and control over it, and innocence <5>. Self-help books for adults who have been sexually, physically or severely emotionally abused as children, and/or of growing up with alcoholic parents have flooded the shelves of women's bookstores in the past 10 years <6>. What is becoming clear is that the adult who lives with such trauma throughout his/her life without resolution suffers from some very clear disabilities. The abused adult finds that his/her self-esteem drops, and the victim perceives s/he is powerless, useless, and unworthy of love in any form (Bass and Davis, 1988). In other words, the adult feels unable to control anything around him/her. Often adults from a dysfunctional family are poorly socialized, have low self-esteem and are slow to trust others (cp. Engel, 1989; Johnson, 1991; Lew, 1990). For these individuals, burdened with self-hatred and internalized guilt for what they lived through as children, Christianity and Judaism do not seem to offer adequate options for healing (Brock, Bloomquist, Redmond, and Fortune, in Brown and Bohm, 1989; Capps, 1992). Feminist critiques of Christianity in particular are showing that Christian imagery of suffering as desirable and forgiveness towards others hampers the recovery of the victim. It appears that Neo-Pagans are survivors of abusive upbringings who are looking for new frameworks in which they can re-empower themselves spiritually and practically. Luhrmann (1989) notes that the magical circle is perceived as a "safe place" where participants in Neo-Pagan rituals feel they can cry without embarrassment, show emotion, and talk. A graphic description of the circle as "safe place" is given by Luhrmann (1989, 225) where she describes one participant having her feelings validated by all members of her coven. It is pointed out in a footnote that the "therapeutic value of this openness" has not been discussed in the secret society literature. The available literature on surviving dysfunctional families expresses the need of the survivor to find a safe place, along with the need to validate the suppressed feelings of the abused child still living within the adult (Bass and Davis, 1988; Engel, 1989; Johnson, 1991; Lew, 1990). Neo-Pagans are not children, although they often take delight at acting child-like. At one ritual in Ottawa, participants were asked to 'act like kittens' and play with a huge ball of yarn. The weblike creation formed by the participants pitching the yarn back and forth was then given magical value and meaning. Other rituals have included some sort of play or play-acting. It appears this type of adult play is part of the healing which is being enacted, whether consciously or unconsciously. "The freedom to break down, and the freedom to be healed... The magic circle...is curiously like the imaginative sacrality of childhood, the special spot behind the armchair, under the desk, out in the woods, the secret place where fairy tales are almost always true and adults are forbidden to enter" (Luhrmann 1989, 226). The entry into a "secret" family of Neo-Pagans, linked by belief and child-like wonderment is the start of the journey of re-empowerment by Neo-Pagans. They experience membership in a religion which perceives itself as threatened by the community at large, but which embraces the newcomer as family. Numerous Neo-Pagans across Canada referred to their co-religionists as "my real family", "my family of choice", or "my ONLY family". Along with leaving behind the religion of origin, many Neo-Pagans choose to divest themselves of their dysfunctional families as well. Wiccans use the phrase "Perfect Love and Perfect Trust" when interacting, particularly when entering the magical circle. The newcomer appears to be learning love (of self and of others) through Neo-Paganism, and finding trust within the boundaries of the Coven or worship group. It appears that most individuals entering Neo-Paganism are often unaware of their childhood background, due to conscious or unconscious avoidance techniques (such as blocking memories). It appears then, that finding others with similar family backgrounds is an unconscious choice. Many Neo-Pagans do not realize for years (if ever) that they may share common family histories with other believers. DYSFUNCTIONAL "CHICKENS", OR RELIGIO-PHILOSOPHICAL "EGGS"? It is important when investigating how use of magic works as metaphor for the re-empowerment of the individual, that the researcher not try to presuppose which came first. It would be a faulty assumption to state that Neo-Pagans are driven to this religion solely or even primarily, to heal inner wounds. The Neo-Pagan appears to seek out "like" individuals. Most Neo-Pagans and Wiccans repeatedly assert that they never went through any form of "conversion" or "coercion" into this religion. Rather, they describe the phenomenon more like coming home. This was the number one most common description of the experience shared by most Canadian Neo-Pagans upon first meeting other Neo-Pagans, or reading the descriptions in books such as Starhawk's (1989) The Spiral Dance. As many of the individuals had no conscious memory of their familial abusive backgrounds when entering Neo-Paganism, it is something else that attracted them in the first place. Neo-Pagans share one thing in common which cuts through categories and tradition allegiances. They all agree that they are celebrating the sacredness of all living things: Nature, humans, and life wherever present (cp. Eliade, 1976). Perhaps it is this sacrality of all existence which draws the individual to Neo-Paganism, for it underlines at the subconscious level the sacrality of the worshipper him/herself. A worldview which extends the sacred to all things including the self is very powerful for individuals who have been repeatedly socialized to doubt their self-esteem and accept as natural their position as powerless. CONCLUSION It appears that there is a relationship between the way in which power is vested and manifested within Neo-Pagan worship and that religion's ability to draw large numbers of adherents to it. The therapeutic value of how magic is used within Witchcraft and Neo-Paganism along with the concept of the religion as a family unit of choice appears to appeal to individuals from deprived or abusive upbringings at a very deep, primal level. It is the Neo-Pagan belief that all things are equally sacred, coupled with the firm belief that magic is a manifestation of the individual's Will and can affect anything, which first captivates the new participant. Unlike cults which often force adherents to act in ways specified by the charismatic leader (various articles in Halpern, 1983), Neo-Paganism vests all responsibility on the individual with the simple credo (i.e. the Wiccan Rede) "An ye harm none, do what ye will". For perhaps the first time, the individual has control over external forces and is encouraged to continue exercising this control via Will and magical practice. North American Neo-Paganism is a religion of self-empowerment. For Neo-Pagans in Canada magic is a metaphor for change rather than a specific group of actions performed to achieve specific goals <7>. Communities of Witches and Neo-Pagans in Canada practice hands-on healing methods and peer-counselling to grow beyond their dysfunctional backgrounds into individuals concerned with the well-being of themselves, those around them, and the world in general. In other words, as Neo-Pagans transform and heal the world, they transform and heal themselves. NOTES <1> An anthropological witch being understood as the Evans-Pritchard (1950) type; one who hexes or harms another person. <2> This theory is in keeping with Albas and Albas (1989, 612) where four changes in the practice of magic are highlighted: "We might expect magic to be transformed from: (1) being publicly performed to being privately and individually performed; (2) being culturally transmitted to being spontaneously generated; (3) being completely shared by the whole community to being utilized privately by individuals; and (4) being unvarying uniform and consistent in its rituals to being highly variable and even contradictory." <3> E.g. a baby sitter, doctor, teacher, friend of the family. <4> These numbers do not total up to 100%, as many informants reported more than one type of abuse occurring in their personal history: some concurrent, some sequential. <5> Giddens, quoted in Schultz and Lavenda (1990), indicates that power can broadly be called "transformative capacity". Neo-Pagans could be interpreted as using magic as a metaphor and religious freedom to transform their feelings of powerlessness into feelings of power. <6> The concept of the "inner child" has surfaced in the world of pop psychology to the point that some journals are now asking if the concept of healing an "inner child" is instead turning adults into children. <7> Gmelsch, in Lehmann and Myers (1989) shows how baseball players practice superstitious types of magic in modern society. Some Neo-Pagans use this same cause and effect rationale to practice sympathetic magic such as candle spells or cord magic, but most use magic as a metaphoric language which enables them to trust their own decisions on certain issues. BIBLIOGRAPHY Adler, M. 1989. Drawing Down the Moon. New York: Viking Press. Bass, E., & Davis, L. 1988. The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse. New York, Harper and Row. Bateson, G. 1972. Steps To An Ecology of Mind. 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