Loving the Goddess Within An interview with Nan Hawthorne By Wendy Davis Beltaine is truly a time to celebrate life and marks a season where, it seems, pleasure prevails. Paganism is a life-affirming path, and what a perfect time to make the acquaintance of Nan Hawthorne, author of Loving the Goddess Within: Sex Magick for Women. A Seattle writer and college instructor, she also works as a diversity and disabilities-awareness trainer, and as a corporate consultant on volunteerism. Deeply involved in community and spiritual issues as she is, her work personifies the spirit of the sacred rites of spring. In her down-to- earth style, she guides the reader toward a gentle self-discovery and self-love, without which it's difficult to be completely magickal: "Every time you are looking in the mirror, you look at the Goddess. Learning to love the Goddess entails seeing yourself as beautiful." Through the meditations and rituals she writes, it becomes possible to embrace each of the four elements as a lover. Her message is inclusive, nonintimidating, and beautiful in its simplicity: "You are the Goddess. To deny yourself fulfillment, you also deny the Goddess." To find Her becomes a self-initiation and requires few prerequisites. Be you solitary, or in the company of one partner or many, love for yourself and others is the highest tribute you can pay Her. W: How did you come to this path? What traditions do you work with? NH: That's going to be difficult to answer. I can tell you how I got to the point of being drawn to Goddess religions, to aspects of Wicca, to paganism. I think I felt it in my heart as long as I've been alive. I was a real Robin Hood nut as a kid. Then Robin Hood was suddenly replaced by Norse mythology. I read articles, parts of books from very ceremonial Wicca, especially Wicca that identified more with the Christian aspect of Satanism. That's what I thought witchcraft was. The next thing that was significant to me was Womenspirit magazine, published in Oregon from 1974 to 1984. It was very Goddess-oriented and feminist, very earth-religion. That was probably the strongest influence that I had. When they ceased publishing, I decided to become a resource, to help people come together, instead of complaining about not having that resource anymore. I've been very eclectic. If I had to identify who I am, I'm a Goddess- worshipper very much in the tradition of Starhawk. I consider myself thoroughly earth-centered, rather Wiccan and particularly drawn to certain aspects of Norse tradition. I'm interested in some of what I understand to be the older, more Goddess-oriented Norse traditions, and the Vanir, as opposed to the Aesir. I'm Heinz 57 and pretty content with it, actually. W: I think a lot of us are. When I started on this path, I was immediately confused: Which tradition do I study? NH: The reason why a lot of different traditions developed is because peoples were very isolated from each other in ancient times. They developed the poetry of how they spoke about their religion based on what was important in their environment, usually a physical environment, so there will be a different kind of tradition in Northern Europe than in Southern Europe. Now, we are such a melting pot. I once remember someone saying that white, European-born women should not try to follow Native American spirituality; you've got your own spirituality, let us have ours. My question is: Which one do I choose? My Irish, Danish or English background? Do I respond to the spirituality of the physical environment I'm in, since they developed their spirituality in this environment for a reason, or do I relate to the spirituality of an environment I've never been to, just because my ancestors are from there? W: That's a challenge if you aren't a Christian, because historically, the church took people where they found them and homogenized them. When you followed the church, you gave away your heritage and fell into the ranks. NH: The greatest PR job in the history of the mankind. They skillfully took goddesses and made them saints. In Poland, Marzenna was a spring goddess. It always puzzled a friend of mine when they made a straw figure of a Catholic saint and threw her into the creek each year. W: You brought up an interesting point on some people arguing that traditions must conform to remain pure. I recall a priestess arguing that drawing from different sources was magickally ineffective. We don't always have an easy choice in the matter. It's possible for me to feel a strong affinity with Oshun, an African river goddess; are you going to deny the call because there isn't an ethnic match? NH: I myself am very drawn to aboriginal goddesses from Africa and Australia, Eingana the All-Creating is a favorite. She created the world twice. It's very possible that, for some, it's easier to magnify power by focusing it, and perhaps it's hard for them to understand how anyone can do it any other way. W: Clearly, neo-paganism is a spiritual revival growing with great force. NH: Fifteen years ago. People magazine said it was the fastest growing religion in the United States. W: Do you think the general focus on diversity is an attempt to marginalize what subcultures like the Craft are doing, to take the power out of it? NH: I don't know if it's that conscious. I think of it more in terms of the way we've taken things like African-American studies and women's studies and ghettoized them in our colleges, instead of looking at how to make those studies truly part of all the history, literature and psychology classes. I like the connection you're drawing, that within the pagan community, why can't we get more out of the diversity, rather than insisting on categorizing everybody. The whole value of diversity is the strength you get from so many different cultures. From my background in social services, the biggest issue you face is problem solving. How much better we'd be by including every way known to solve problems. W:At the recent pagan community meeting, Native Americans who attended said they would be happy to share what they have learned about maintaining their religion and culture in a patriarchal, Christian country. To me, Native Americans are part of the pagan community, but some others don't agree. NH:I include them. Any aboriginal religion is decidedly pagan. W: I later spoke with a member of the Northwest Five Tribes Association, who attended the meeting. She pointed out that if modern pagans live an earth-centered way of life, are they ready to challenge those who endanger the earth? This makes me wonder if we're ready to stand up and hold Slade Gorton accountable? NH: One of the four myths of patriarchal culture that Starhawk talks about is the myth of the Great Man, dispensing the myth to the chosen, that his is the only true path. It's saying that spirit isn't part of everything. Part of the problem is that we're still struggling to know spirit and magick without being restricted by patriarchal images. Another myth says, you're either saved or fallen. Isn't that the same thing when you insist on one particular path in paganism? That's a Christian myth, not a pagan myth. W: As pagans, we need to be more aware of the insidiousness of the Judeo-Christian morality that permeates the whole culture. Pagans have it as well, and it makes it so difficult to be inclusive and tolerant and to be a community. NH: Community means coming together and sharing. W: It's been said that America is a self-hating, child-hating society. NH: Certainly life-hating. W:The whole Puritan ethos. If there's an easier way, you punish yourself and do it the hard way. The subject of diversity leads me to another pagan controversy: sexual energy and the male/female polarity. Some people insist on boy, girl, boy, girl. In Celtic Magic, Murry Hope claims that her elemental contacts disapprove of homosexuality. If we're in a world where the Goddess is immanent, how can an element of the Goddess disapprove of certain forms of sexual expression? NH: I mention Plato's myth from The Symposium. We were originally bound as twins; some were male and female, some male and male, some female and female. We were separated and have tumbled through time ever since, searching for our other half. After 13 years with my partner, I've come to the conclusion that whatever gender we were born would have decided whatever orientation we were going to be. If he'd been a woman, I'd be a lesbian. If I'd been a man and he'd been a woman, I'd be a straight man. I thoroughly believe we were meant to have each other again in this life. So whether I'm straight or gay is pretty irrelevant, because I'm whatever it takes to be with him. W: In your book, you mention that denying pleasure is destructive not only to the individual, but society at large. You also address the ideal body image that so many of us struggle against. NH: We're supposed to love the Goddess and God whatever they look like, even the thin ones. W: When do you think the modern standard that we're overcoming right now went into place? NH: Our standard of what females should look like has only existed in our culture within the last 30 or 40 years. Even Canadian women have a much more liberated attitude toward their shape. It's also possible that women might have a lot to do with it, that we were getting more than our Judeo-Christian culture wanted us to have, so we started feeling guilty and had to deny ourselves. Slim for Him is a book that gave me a good chuckle. Be thin because Jesus wants you to. At Oral Roberts University, you can't attend if you're fat or disabled. W: "You are the Goddess" is one of the strongest messages in your book, and you apply it to both women and men. You also feel that it's mainly patriarchal institutions that have a stake in not giving people easy access to safe-sex information and tools. NH: According to family planning officials, if we give kids sex education, they'll go out and do it. Well, they're already doing it. They're doing it wrong. W: You encourage giving our daughters the gift of loving themselves, of knowing pleasure; this alone is so radical that it could topple patriarchy. NH: Absolutely. You were talking before about how hard it is even for pagans to really understand sexual freedom. If there's any issue where that's the hardest, it's how to handle the sexuality of your children. We have a responsibility to protect them by teaching them self-respect and caution, safe techniques and methods. If people could feel that strongly about their own persons, and can feel good about expressing the pleasure of that person, then who's going to stop us? Patriarchy absolutely depends on ownership of another person or thing. If we (pagans) still think we own our kids' sexuality, then I think we're in trouble. W: When Sharon Devlin was interviewed in Drawing Down the Moon, she complained that witches weren't having enough sex, that we weren't wild enough, weren't having enough ecstatic experiences. It seemed then that hers was a lone voice. NH: The only other book I found on sex magick at the time I was writing my book was Sex Magick by Louis Culling. One of the things he said was that women who've had a hysterectomy can't practice sex magick. W: Wiccans now have representation on the Interfaith Council of Washington. It's a great thing to be recognized and respectable. However, some who want the Craft to be respectable want the sex taken out of Beltaine, no actual Great Rite, etc. NH: It sounds like the early women's rights movement. Don't offend the status quo if you want to be accepted. It's ironic because two institutions, the U.S. Army and the prison system, now recognize Wicca. If we still live in a patriarchal culture, even though we may have dissented from it, we can't expect everybody to automatically become liberated the first day they become pagans. You do harm to yourself, others, the Goddess and the God if sexual rituals are not consensual. W: On sexual ethics, you suggest choosing a partner based on whether or not you'd want to exchange energy with them. You bring part of them into you. NH: Yes, are you sharing energy with someone you would be happy being? People newly drawn to paganism sometimes see it as a license to do anything. There are consequences. We're more responsible in our religious beliefs than any other religion, because we believe in energy- return. Magick is stronger when done in concert, if you're truly aware of each other. W: The way many of us live, we don't necessarily celebrate Beltaine as a literal fertility festival, making love in the fields, desiring children or fearing a famine. I think some have difficulty reconciling an old country practice with the way we live today. NH: We may not be facing famine now, but we might be down the road. We can recognize fertility in the world as basic. There are some parts of the world where we have created famine, through lack of responsibility and ignorance of earth fertility. Ethiopia is devoid of farmland because we've cut down all the trees. We didn't understand how fertility works, and the desert is encroaching. W: Community is part of the Beltaine celebration. Lately, there's been a debate as to whether or not Seattle has a pagan community. A community meeting was scheduled last month. Panelists at the meeting agreed to disagree: No, we don't have a community. If there isn't a community, why did people show up? Pete Pathfinder of the Aquarian Tabernacle Church said it best: We're a loose confederation, a subculture, that's done everything contrary to becoming a true community. NH: Paganism is probably the purest form of political anarchism. W: Anyway, that's why we'll always have disagreements. Most people who go down this path have a strong sense of individuality. NH: How we define community is largely based on our attitude toward sex. W: Witches are taught to never draw upon another's energy without their permission, especially in healing and spell work. What's your feeling about raising energy with a partner who may not know about your purpose? NH: You can raise your own energy. It's wrong to use somebody else's power without their permission. And why would you want to? The dishonesty would affect your magick. You may not always have a partner or a partner who believes in the magick of sex. You always have yourself. I don't see a problem with masturbation as ritual sex. W: You include a masturbation ritual in your book and highly recommend making love to yourself before ritual to ground and center. Why do so many people equate masturbation with failure? NH: When Kinsey surveyed men in the 1950s, more admitted to homosexual relationships than to masturbating. This goes back to sexual attractiveness. We're really worried about being acceptable to another human being, that another person coupling with us shows us that we're worthwhile. Masturbation is seen as purely sexual, whereas sex with a partner is seen as including love. There is no reason why masturbation can't also include love. I was shocked when a Good Vibrations advertisement was rejected by Ms. magazine, so I included this ad in Circles of Exchange. Only one COE participant complained. She wrote back and said that the body was a sacred temple. I wrote back to her and told her that mine was too, it just had an electric organ. W: What's your view on celibacy? NH: "All acts of love and pleasure are my rituals." What a waste. What is the purpose? It doesn't raise energy; it denies power. I actually think it's physically unhealthy to deny sexual energy. Humans need that release to stay healthy. W: America seems obsessed with the dark side of sexuality: sexual abuse and violence, date rape, child molestation. As a society, we're conditioned to view touching as threatening, rarely as caring or intimate. Do you see any hope that we'll become healthier and less repressed? NH: One would hope that we are getting more sexually free, and hopefully more emotionally and personally free. I think we are going through a period of adjustment to a new sexual morality. There was always abuse, it just wasn't polite to talk about it. When the pendulum swings back to reality, we can trust again. Nan Hawthorne lives peacefully in the wilds of Northgate. She welcomes the chance to speak to groups or offer training. You can contact her through Circles of Exchange, 9594 1st Ave NE, Suite 413, Seattle, WA 98115