Antonyms #1: Self-Important Bologna

Welcome to the first installment of the Antonyms to Righteousness series! This will be an ongoing and irregular series aimed at pointing out those annoying habits, patterns, situations, and (dare I say it?) people that have the potential to unhex your life. "But is such a thing possible?" you ask. Unfortunately so, if we do not have the fortitude to withstand the onslaught of un-righteous sludge. And, really, who can keep their fortitude level up above a 3 every day of the week?

But fear not! Upon learning of these Antonyms to Righteousness your awareness level is sure to increase. An increase in awareness is an increase in defense. And, it is my hope (and the Great Celestial Chicken's) that increasing your defense will increase your resilience and your resolve to right the wrongs, make good the bads, hex the unhexed, and bring general awesomeness to otherwise non-awesome situations!

So let's troll out our very first AoR: Self-Important Bologna!

You find a lot of this is in corporate America, which is where I happen to work at the moment, in case you were wondering what inspired this post. There are many, many self important-people, self-important processes, self-important forms, self-important etc. etc. In case you are not graced with the wonders of a corporate desk job (which my job is not supposed to be but has become) you might not fully grasp the extent of this. We have spreadsheets for everything, including spreadsheets to tell us what our spreadsheets are named.

People and processes and forms and spreadsheets can all be wonderful, helpful, useful things. Until they become self-important. Once that happens, you get stuck in corporate mud. You waste millions of dollars inefficiently making sure you are efficient enough. You simply cannot help feeding the cycle by creating solutions to problems that only end up creating a new dimension to the problem.

Don't get me wrong. My analytical side is all for well thought-out procedures and data sharing. And when done with the focus on the task at hand these things are amazing tools, really showing off the human left brain prowess. It's when the focus shifts from the task at hand to the task of describing that task that you have a real problem.

It should be obvious how this type of thinking can adversely affect the mundane aspects of your life. But (here comes a shocker!) this same thing happens in pagan religion. "Not paganism," I hear you say. "We're too free-form, power-sharing, divinely inspired." And we are indeed all of those things at times, and I'd like to think more often than most other religious groups. But most of us come from the strictness of One True Way churches and the rigidness of information age capitalism, and it can be very easy to slip back into old habits.

It saddens me when I see people get offended - actually offended! - when they see a different type of circle casting at a public ritual. It hurts me when I hear of staunch traditionalists stepping in to stamp out inspiration in their students. In a religion that daily sings the praises of independence and individualism, it is shocking to me to see so much Self-Important Bologna!

Allow me to clarify my statement by returning to my previous example of the task of describing the task. The average Wiccan circle casting ceremony will do the following things: cleanse the space, cut the circle, call the powers. Each of these steps is elaborated greatly with wide variations from tradition to tradition, and even from circle to circle within traditions. Some add steps before, after, of between those listed.

Let's say I'm teaching a class and we've gone over varying ways to cleanse space, what it means to cut a circle, and lots of different powers that witches can work with (elements, guardians, gods, guides, etc.). Let's also say that this class has never been taught a formal circle ceremony before. I might say to this class, "The steps to creating a sacred space suitable for our ritual are to cleanse the space, cut the circle, and call some powers to watch over us." If I then asked them how they wanted to do all of these things, do you think our space would be any less sacred than a Gardenerian circle with all of the bells and whistles?

When it comes down to it, there are certain principles and procedures that everyone seems to agree upon based on their training and experience (cleanse, cut, call, for example). As long as these requirements are met with right intent, the rest is fluff that expresses the taste of the people or tradition involved. When my way to cast a circle becomes the right way to cast a circle, I'm fucked. I've lost sight of the spirit behind the circle rite and have become focused on the rite itself (mistaking the menu for the meal, as they say).

This is a sure-fire way to remove your own righteous hex. And once you've done that, you're only a hop, skip, and jump away from lifting yourself up to the level of self-importance. Which would make you the bologna.

And nobody likes bologna.